


What the Water Gave Me

by Arcanda



Series: The Sei Series [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, CLEXA MAIN, Canon Departure, Caretaking, Character Study, Clexa, Clexa fix, Cluna, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Commander Lexa, Confessions, Consent, Depression, Deviates From Canon, Drama, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Feelings, Feels, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Headcanon, Healing, Heda Lexa, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury, Jealous Clarke, Loss, Love, Lunarke, Lunexa, OC Luna, Ocean, Original Character(s), Pain, Past, Pining, Polyamorous Character, Post Season 2 AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protectiveness, Relationship(s), Responsibility, Romance, Sad Clarke, Secrets, Seikru, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Tension, The Sea People, Trauma, Wanheda Angst, War, War Leader Problems, alternate season 3, canonesque, clarke/lexa - Freeform, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:27:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6074017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcanda/pseuds/Arcanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been months, wars, bodies upon bodies—but this time, Clarke finally finds her way, stray and fractured, to that promised haven by the sea. The people she had sought to protect are gone: either killed or permanently mutilated into something new. This time, Clarke is utterly. Alone. </p><p>(OC Luna, Post-S2 finale AU Clexa)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ' CHESA '

**Author's Note:**

> This will be an ongoing series (sequel is already writen) and you can consider it an alternative to Season 3, right from the wake of S2. Polis is Annapolis. Luna is OC. No Nightbloods or AI. (There are a couple similarities and parallels but 95% of the content was written before S3 aired).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This one's about healing, when life still refuses to stop. Title inspired by the Florence & Machine song of the same name. Post-S2 finale (diversion from canon), OC Luna. Originally written over hiatus, so won't be conforming to S3 canon.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **[Full 8Tracks Soundtrack](http://www.8tracks.com/arcanda/what-the-water-gave-me)—For this chapter: On the Road, Hilmar Orn Hilmarson | Flowering Trees, David & Steve Gordon | Venus in Wastelands, Al Gromer Khan.**

* * *

 

**—~X~—**

 

 

Clarke almost tripped when her feet landed on beaten-down clay.

The terrain was as foreign to her feet as the amount of people in her company were to her senses. She hadn't been manhandled, so far. But with the retinue of escorts around her, she still wasn't sure whether she was being treated like a dignitary or a prisoner.

It had been a crapshoot announcing herself at the edge of the city. She was ragged but hardened at this point, and she hoped she at least cut an imposing presence. Everything was a crapshoot now.

But she kept her chin held high anyway.

 

* * *

  

Clarke remembered shivering one morning when she had looked out over the rolling mountains, tufts of fog plopped on top of their beautiful, fiery leaves. 

And realizing how _utterly fucked_ she was.

It was threatening to turn from unpleasant and nippy into the kind of cold that sank deep into your bones and stayed there. It had been one of the things that kept Clarke moving, all day, everyday, as much as she could. Sometimes probably in circles.

If she hadn't had the extra supplies and bits of clothing she'd scavenged and stolen along the road she would have already been pretty screwed.

The idea of going back to the Mountain, to her mother _'The Chancellor,'_ then, as now, was not an option. What laid behind her there felt like a death in itself, so much harder to stomach than anything that lay ahead of her on the wild ground. Because it touched her soul. Her ability to breathe. To function. To feel like she inhabited her body, or owned the simple right of being herself.

Maybe that was what she'd really set out looking for.

It hadn't taken long for all of that to play a role in her wandering, maybe more intentionally than she would admit, towards the people by the Sea who Lincoln had once given them directions to.

She wasn't quite ready to hole up in a cave, scraping for survival for the next four, long, winter months. To abandon all potential connection to her people and anything else in the world. To slowly freeze and starve to death. Yet.

Clarke wandered for days through the coastal woodlands in search of those people: _Chesa_ , the City of the Sea. She picked the name off the lips of a swarthy outsider, the same way she'd picked other things off of camps and bodies. She stuck to the wild since she departed from Jaha. Drifting, with her fractured heart and stoney exterior. It took two long, painful weeks. Alone—all the time, scared, scavenging—either wanting to die, or railing with every cell in her body against death.

The first week had been the worst. She had gone so far as smearing the charred ash from her drop-ship victims onto her face to blend in. She barely slept at all for five days. She only brought herself back from the dangerous edge she'd been skating when the hallucinations, from lack of sleep and food nearly led her off the same cliff as Charlotte. If she hadn't been almost positive it was the same cliff, she may not have cared. So in a way, Charlotte and Wells had saved her; for the time being.

Clarke had never been so alone before in her life. She never would have been able to if she'd tried. It caught her off guard and worked into her veins, like the icy chill of the autumn air that was slowly beginning to swallow everything. Being alone? It was _all_ about survival, every second.

But Clarke became survival. She became loneliness. She beat them into submission and stepped inside of them.

Now they were an electric charge, coursing through her veins; both her very lifeblood and at once an infection. It left a crackling aura in the trail behind and ahead of her that even Clarke could tell reeked of an unsustainable ending with an epic quality.

The solitude had been consuming, weighing down the air she breathed. But in reality, during those weeks, that felt like months, she'd already come across many people; some harmful, some helpful. She was steered in a general direction. One collected by subtle questions and observations. She didn't want anyone to know where she might be. Because she _was_ very much alone. And she wanted it to stay that way.

Clarke had circumvented Polis two days earlier. She'd done her best to bypass it after almost bumping right into it by mistake: the trees opening up to that flooring view. It wasn't like it hadn't been seductive when she'd seen it off in the distance over the water, the big gates and old towers sticking up beyond them, like something retrofitted out of an industrial medieval times.

It was more than she'd been expecting. _Bigger_. And it made her heart ache. It made her feel like a ghost.

She had run into some trouble outside the walls but had managed to wit her way out of it. In the process she'd picked up on the buzz that Polis was under heavy guard and in some kind of upheaval.

All the more reason to stay away.   

After tromping through sandy terrain for more than two days, the first sign of Chesa had been what turned out to be an artificial reef on the beach, towering over the low tide in Clarke's path.

It was pieced together from the stacked skeletons of old automobiles, barnacled and green with dripping seaweed. For some reason—though, the arches were nothing more than holes where there had once been glass—it reminded her of the ancient, arched aqueducts she'd seen pictures of in history books. Civilization.

She ducked through it and plucked shellfish out of the tide puddles inside, so stocked they couldn't have been unattended. The scrape marks from harvesting tools gave that away. It wasn't too much farther before she ran into some fishers on the sandy bluffs, armed with almost nothing but fishing tools. One of them bolted for guards the second they saw her.

She had turned the words over and over again in her head since she'd left, cleaning them up like a mantra, never quite sure if or when she was going to use them. "Ai laik Klark, Heda kom Skaikru." _I am Clarke. Commander of the Sky People._ She fortified her chest, along with all the venom inside of her, and used the most imposing voice she could summon, probably channeling Lexa. "Ai gaf seigeda-de. Teik ai kom yo heda." _I seek the Sea Nation. Take me to your leader."_

 

* * *

 

Clarke peered between the guards that now surrounded her as they drifted into the streets of Chesa, and tried to get a look at it without compromising her posture, or appearing distracted. The sights, smells, and sounds—the energy of life—weighed down on her shoulders like a warm smog.

Drums emanated from some obscure place in the city that she couldn't make out. But they weren't war drums. They were lighthearted; almost peaceful. It hit her in a way that gripped onto her bones and stole her attention away. It was the first time she'd heard something like that in a long time. It was almost eerie. The echo mingled with the breeze and radiated throughout the landscape, earthy and playful.

Chesa was smaller, flatter, and more sprawled out than Polis, but overflowing with vitality. It was mostly made of ruinous lumps and repurposed pieces of the past, which had been overtaken and fleshed out by crisp new timber, stucco, and canvas: humanity acting like some kind of ambitious moss. The city may have been low-lying and humble by the ground's standards, but its raw energy was immense.

Even when they'd barely stepped foot inside, at the height of afternoon activity, when the day's work had died away, Clarke had never seen anything like it, never _felt_ anything like it. It may have been the culture shock of people and vitality around her, but it made her heart hammer into her ribs against her will. 

There was enough cover where the village was nestled beside the sea, that it buffered the icy-wind Clarke had run into on the beach. She was grateful for that. It was getting colder, and whatever was about to happen to her? Here, there was sun in the sky.

A group of children ran by Clarke, and one of them tripped, eyes catching first on her holstered gun, and then staring up at her blonde hair. A guard mumbled something curt in trigedasleng to him and the kid ran away with his friend, still shooting her curious looks as he did.

She clenched her jaw against the cool air to keep her gut from churning.

 

* * *

 

In the beginning, Clarke had thought about going back to Mount Weather. To spend every day, giving every one of the people she'd killed enough of a funeral rite to put them to rest

She'd thought about it a lot.

Part of her _needed_ to. But even just that thought, of actually doing it, made her mind unhinged. The idea of their raw bodies sitting there rotting with the food on their plates—in it—seeped into her nightmares and in between the trees, following her around.

After one horrible night surrounded by a black plume of death in the drop-ship, she'd gone back first to the supply hatch she'd found with Bellamy, and then to Finn's bunker—now a tomb—looking for shelter, a hiding spot, and anything she could use as supplies. She'd thought about staying there, but she couldn't take it. Not just moving the decaying, forgotten body of the grounder Finn had killed, and all the images it evoked of Mount Weather. Not just the risk of Bellamy finding her there. But everything; everything that space had been beaten and mutated into. The colored pencils that still sat innocently on the table made it worse.

The metal deer Finn had given her was the one sentimental thing other than her dad's watch that Clarke had on her. The presence of the deer burned, seething, wherever she kept it. Everything about it was full of weight, sharp angles, and despair.

Maybe this really was what life on earth was like, maybe it had always been an inevitability: you had to grow two separate faces. One was hideous, grotesque and mutated, but there was no way to hide it. If you were lucky it wouldn't kill you; right away.

Clarke wasn't sure she could carry the weight of hers anymore. But since she didn't have a different option, she trudged on with it anyway.

 

* * *

  

There was a wait, when her escorts finally seemed to have reached wherever they'd been marching her to from the fringes of the city, at the head of the building they now stood in front of. Clarke was soon led into what must have been their central meeting hall.

A woman with piercing eyes sat before her in a lofted chair. 

Her gaze ripped through Clarke from the far end of the room as she got nearer: sharp, light, and unbreaching. Her deep, tawny skin was rich with warm undertones, like sun kissed river clay twinkling under a current. There was a glow about her persona, surrounding her. It was only set off by a halo of light from the melted crescent of candles that encircled her on the dais. But it was more than just the candlelight. Something about the woman's presence itself was luminescent, and she carried it with power. Aside from the graceful arc of her jawline, her body was doe-like and absent of hard angles, but she emulated the opposite in the way she held herself.

The back of the throne was a carefully proportioned arc of driftwood. It radiated out from behind her in desperate, organic patterns—the surface flat and smooth, but the shapes ragged and pitted against the candlelight from being tossed in the sea. Small shafts of light broke through, where their branches had long since disintegrated. It cast a dramatic shadow around the woman; dark beams of liquid mercury. The geometry of the throne itself was embellished by what Clarke suspected were bones from sea animals she didn't recognize. 

"So," the woman said firmly, breaking the weight of the silence. Her chin was high and steady as Clarke faced her throne. She must have been about the same age as Anya. "You are _Klark_. Commander of the Sky People."

"Hi…" It came out of Clarke's mouth rather unceremoniously.

She didn't feel like much of a commander anymore. Especially not the one the Sea Queen was suggesting by the way she was looking at her. Clarke wasn't sure at this point if she looked tough and impressive, or just like a dirty, pathetic stray.

She fortified herself. But not for the steel that had already been hardened into her cheeks and lips, drilled into her eyes every day that had passed since she'd left Camp Jaha: and probably every day before that, she didn't know where that started and ended anymore. But she fortified herself to _care_. Enough to bother with any of this. To pretend she was still a leader when her heart was withered, burnt out, and done with trying.

As Clarke stood there, the Sea Queen appraised her carefully, her chin still held high as she did.

The fabrics that clung to the woman were soft and coarsely dyed in colors lighter than the Tree People and their warriors'; flaxens and blues. The relaxed sense they evoked was cut and chiseled around the Sea Queen's lithe frame by both a dramatic, hide vest and her adornment: all weaves, stones, and silvers, her sleeves rolled up carelessly at her wrists. She cocked her head and then set it back into place. Her eyes glinted with a depth that had the potential to either ruin or solace a person. "My name is Luna."

"I know."

Luna didn't say anything. She just inspected Clarke again, this time more thoroughly. A soft smile wedged itself under the corner of her lips, an easy attitude that was clouded by intrigue. And something else.

Clarke wasn't sure whether it boded well for her future or not.

"I have heard much about you." The shine in Luna's gray-green eyes danced in the twinkling candlelight and pierced through Clarke. "There are many rumors."

Clarke stared back at her without saying anything.

"They call you ' _dragan'._ Because you fly from the sky and spread fire."

"I'm not a dragon."

"No." This smile of Luna's was still subtle, but different. Though her chin was still level in the air and her spine still poised and rigid, something in her tone and the subtleties of her expression suggested a shift towards warmth and amusement. "It seems, you are much more beautiful and clever than a dragon."

Clarke was taken off guard. She narrowed her eyes at the flirtation and repressed the impulse to roll them, trying to remain steady. She forced a soft smile back at the Sea Queen instead. Flattery and humor were better than threats and crucifixion.

Luna's eyes roamed unabashedly over Clarke. There was an intimidating ease in the way she did it, but it didn't quite seem threatening. Clarke wasn't sure if that part bothered her more. She knew if it wasn't for the steel now permanently set in her bones, in her jaw, and the ferocity in her eyes, that she would have looked like a rough-shod mess. But she was comfortable. She'd had enough time in the wild on the run, clawing out a survival she wasn't sure she wanted, to become hardened. To perfect the worn clothes and gear that clung to her now like armor in all the right places, extensions of her body.

Clarke took a step forward. She ignored the guards who flinched with her movement, pushing spears in her way, and beginning to unsheathed their swords. She took another step, then glanced down at the spear pointed in front of her chest and shot the guard--a woman with warrior-eyes, even sharper than Luna's--a quick glare. "I didn't come here to shoot you."

Luna was silent for a long moment, assessing Clarke without relent. She then gave a nod and a little hum. "I see why the the Commander likes you."

Clarke clenched her jaw and tried not shift uncomfortably. "Lexa betrayed me and my people in the heat of war—" she halted over her own words, "she's not… _here_ , is she?"

Luna's smile, this time, was more pronounced. "No. My spouse is on the war council. He traveled many times between _Tondisi_ and _Polis_."

"I'm…" Clarke almost faltered under her gaze, "glad he wasn't in TonDC when it was bombed."

"He was." Luna nodded.

A stone rose in Clarke's throat.

"Reluctantly. We are peaceful people, we do not like to participate in war. But he is one of us who works to keep things that way." Luna's posture relaxed a little but she was still giving Clarke an inquiring look. "He survived the missile."

"Good."

"He says you have a reputation for being both ruthless and compassionate at once. Bearing your compassion on one sleeve and your exploits on the other." She paused, her eyes still boring into Clarke's. "And that the Commander defends you like a cougar its young."

 _Only when it's convenient_ , Clarke thought. 

But she didn't say it out loud. She didn't want to appear small. And until she knew more, she resolved herself to avoid mention of who exactly was still allied with who right now. Politically speaking, she wasn't sure she even knew.

"You have done many big things in a very short time."

"All I was doing was looking after my people." The words were passionless, meant to be off-cuff, but they echoed through Clarke's mind, a mantra crashing behind everything else; accompanied by the gray fog of Mount Weather that threatened to push in around the edges of the room and swallow her.

Luna gave Clarke another knowing smile that simultaneously bothered and comforted her. There was a gentle smugness to it. "Does a healer make a better leader than a warrior?"

Clarke shrugged.

Luna studied her carefully, but her face soon lit in a way that appeared to be relaxed rather than sinister or austere. "Why did you come here?"

"Lincoln sent us when Lexa was first attacking my people and we were going to flee."

Luna perked up at Lincoln's name. She nodded.

"He said you were compassionate," Clarke said, "and a friend of his. That you might help us."

"Linkon is alive?" Luna asked.

Clarke nodded. "Yes. He's one of _my_ people now." She was pretty sure he'd made that decision with Octavia by not following Lexa's retreat.

"I heard many different things and did not know which to believe."

"He's safe."

"Good." Luna nodded at her again. "And what was his _real_ reason for desertion...?"

Clarke found her attitude about Lincoln interesting. It calmed her nerves for some reason. "Having a heart. My people view that as a strength, not a weakness."

"As do I."

Clarke raised her eyebrows at that.

But Luna continued before Clarke could question the sentiment. "And you haven't answered my question," she said. "Lexa is no longer attacking your people. Why do you come all this way to the city of Chesa by the sea, _Klark Grifin_?"

Clarke's mouth fluttered a little. _To run away_. It bothered her that Luna somehow knew her full name.

"Are your people with you?" Luna asked.

"No," Clarke answered reluctantly, knowing it was a risk to throw away that hand. "It's only me."

She hedged. She was improvising."I don't like war either." Clarke reached back to diplomacy, and the cover of words that was now both a weapon and a piece of her armor. "It seems we have that in common."

She squared herself and tugged the speech down around her with the last reserves left in her heart. "My people are refugees from beyond the sky. We have a history of being put in impossible situations and doing what we have to, to survive the impossible. Our lives in space were hard and bleak but they were simple." She hoped the effort looked and sounded better than she felt, because with any slack in pushing through it, the words made her simultaneously tired and nauseous.

Clarke punctuated them by taking an ambling step forward to let them settle in. "I have to believe there's something better ahead for us than eternal war, than _fighting_. That there _can_ be more to life than that again—than spending every night sleeping with one eye open—always expecting a threat."

She stared back at Luna, who was now paying very close attention: she wasn't just hearing, but _listening_. "You seek to flee the trees?" Luna asked carefully.

Clarke sucked air into her lungs. She looked at the ground and took her time to answer before looking back up at Luna. "Maybe."

"The Seikru are a part of the Coalition of Nations. What Linkon asked before would have been a betrayal of our own, and brought much turmoil to my people. If luck did not grace you."

"So you would have killed us all?"

"No," Luna said, enigmatically. "But I'm interested in the present and the future, not in false pasts. You seek an alliance with us?"

"Yes."

"Behind Leksa's back?"

"I don't trust Lexa anymore. I do trust Lincoln."

"We are still Leksa's people." Luna added, "Despite what you may have heard."

Clarke scowled. "And what's that?"

"The war that is brewing."

"What war? The war is over—I _ended_ it." A knee jerk reaction gripped Clarke and she became incensed.

"Not your war, Sky Commander. Ours."

"I've..." Clarke looked at her in confusion, "been traveling."

Luna rose from the throne. Her stance was powerful and official as she floated the rest of the way to Clarke. But she didn't have that edge—on the verge of going for the jugular at any moment—that the other grounder leaders Clarke had met all had.

The pomp then all disappeared so quickly Clarke didn't even catch it leaving. "Come…" Luna gestured a hand at Clarke, then began to walk passed her. "You are welcome among my people, _Klark_. We can discuss this in private after you eat."

"I—" Clarke was a little caught off guard by the sudden dissolution of formality.

She started to say she didn't need to eat, that she wanted to discuss it _now._ But when reminded of her hunger she realized she hadn't eaten anything other than raw oysters in days. So instead, she nodded.

Luna's eyes now looked non-judgmental and inviting. "Welcome to Chesa."

 

-x-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **TRIGEDASLENG TRANSLATIONS:**   
> 
> 
> ****
> 
> HEADCANONED :
> 
>  **'Chesa'** \- the city of the Sea People on Delmarva peninsula, east of the Chesapeake Bay (south-east of 'Polis', which you would have to pass to get onto the peninsula by land).
> 
>  **'Klark'** \- I use the phonetic trigedasleng spelling of names whenever a grounder is speaking, whether in English or otherwise. I find this a helpful characterization reminder while writing...hopefully reading too (also I just find the image of a little cartoon version of Lexa running around calling her 'Klark' adorable.)  
> NOTE: Still on the fence abt italicizing with both the phonetics & language, so let me know if that throws you out, ya?
> 
>  **'Seigeda; Seikru'** \- _('say-geda'; 'say-kru') The Sea Nation; The Sea People, Luna's people._  
>  NOTE: Whatever happens in canon, in this U Luna is the leader of the coastal people on Delmarva, whereas the Boat People (Floudakru) inhabit the Chesapeake Bay rivermouths and in large part the bay itself. Seigeda is the trade center, Floudageda is the main transport for supplies (especially to the capitol).


	2. ' SEI'EDA '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Soundtrack for this chapter is also Venus in Wastelands, Al Gromer Khan—[Full 8Tracks Soundtrack](http://www.8tracks.com/arcanda/what-the-water-gave-me)**   
> 

* * *

  **—-x-—**

 

After Clarke's belly was full, her bones resting, and the sky dark, Luna called on her at the door of the private, earthy bungalow she'd been given to sleep.

The bungalow was tucked away on a quiet path with a couple of small structures between it and one of the central fires where some 'seconds' peacefully ambled around to tend to it or patrol. It was a solitary building on an outcropping behind some brushy cover and a couple small trees, where the glow of the moon against the ocean could still be seen from the windows: it could withstand the sting of winter even this close to the sea. The space was informal and cozy. There was a raised, substantially sized, bed, a makeshift chair, some side tables and rugs--gorgeous fabrics compared to anything Clarke was used to--but almost nothing else. She had seen many more-impermanent structures in Chesa, and suspected that even in its elegant simplicity this was a place for important people.

Luna had a piping hot cup in her hands that she handed to Clarke.

Clarke sniffed it.

"Tea," Luna said. She reached out and put a cover on it to keep it warm. "For sleeping, after we speak." The sky had already begun to darken hours ago after Clarke arrived in the city, but there was still soft drumming emanating from somewhere in the distance.

"Thank you..." Clarke knew she should be wary of _everyone_ but she was tired of it.

If Lincoln vouched for Luna it meant something. And she had a refreshing, open quality to her. Her eyes, though intense, were sincere, and she was direct. There was something about her attitude that felt simultaneously familiar and fresh. Clarke didn't get the gut impression, at least, that there was bullshit lying under the surface of Luna's charm, but more so that she was generally a warm-hearted person.

Maybe it was wishful thinking. Or maybe Clarke was just so fatigued with it all she didn't care anymore. Even as a potential enemy, though, Luna felt like someone she could confide that in.

There was also the fact that Clarke had the distinct feeling, in the cozy intimate firelight—with Luna's magnetism and stillness—that she was being come on to.

"What war?" Clarke asked.

Luna's gaze became distant and furrowed. "The Ice People. Have you heard of them? _Azgeda?_ "

 _Shit_ , Clarke thought: they were the former enemies of the trigeda that had killed Costia. Clarke nodded.

"There is a rift in the Coalition of Nations Lexa has forged, and it is being divided, threatening to break apart. The Queen of the Ice People seeks power as she had before, and there is tension. Words buzzing. She seeks to use Lexa's actions in war against her to divide the people. No matter how careful those actions may have been."

Luna sipped her own tea and sighed. She sat back comfortably, sideways on the floor by the low, box-like table in the middle of the room, which must have been its intended use.

Luna didn't seem concerned that Clarke might slit her throat. Or that she would lose ground in the silent pissing match the other Grounders always shot from their eyes.

Clarke followed her example and kneeled against a thick cushion at the other side of the table. She wasn't ready to let her guard down or get too comfortable, but her body was still exhausted.

"The Commander made bold gestures, as always, for all of the people as a whole. But the Ice Queen would seek to degrade her any way she can, regardless of her actions."

"Smear campaign," Clarke mumbled. She'd heard about the incidents on board the Ark that sabotaged the Exodus. It sounded similar. The same old bullshit: people clinging for power and taking the ship down with them— _Power_ — _Why? What good was it?_ All it brought was work, and pain.

Clarke wished she didn't trust Luna as much as she instinctively did right now. She was tired of getting bitten by sleeping snakes; worried her instincts were frayed and tired as well. The last thing she wanted to do right now was somehow get involved with helping Lexa.

"She is trying to use any means necessary to strain the alliances forged between our people, both within clans and between them. To turn them against one another, so that she may move her army in and take power from Leksa by force."

 _Idiot_ , Clarke thought vehemently of the woman causing war on purpose. _Violent_ _ **idiot**_. But she only nodded.

"I am surprised to see you here, Klark. This is a dangerous and precarious time."

"Maybe that's exactly why I'm here."

"I would caution, it would be risky for any blonde sky woman traveling alone right now."

"Why?" Clarke demanded.

"You are valuable."

"And how do you even know I am who I say I am?"

Luna gave her an enigmatic look. "Because I can see it, in the way you carry yourself. In your eyes."

Clarke's immediate thoughts were bitter. _You have no idea. How good I am at faking that._

"What is it that you _really_ seek? Ships, supplies?" Luna wasn't going to let her fuck around was she?

"I already told you. Friends."

Luna glanced up at her from where she stirred her tea on the table. "There has been talk," she said, "that the Ice People are seeking to turn your people against Leksa because of her retreat at Mount Weather. To forge an alliance with your people themselves. For your weapons."

A chill went down Clarke's spine at the last part. _Is that what had been going on back at the Ark since she's been gone? They wouldn't do that._

_Would they?_

They would do whatever protected them and made them most secure.

"There is also talk you have allied with the Mountain People, and have access to their bombs."

Clarke went cold.

What was previously a chill turned into an icy hand that clawed its way down her back. They didn't know.

They didn't _know._

She'd been looking aimlessly, irresponsibly, for a place to heal and get away from this, only half conscious of where her feet were taking her, as they plodded with the weight of an anchor in every step. Hoping, as she wandered and improvised, that her scabs might heal over enough, to act again by the time she reached somewhere, anywhere.

She couldn't get away from it.

Clarke shook her head. "I did not ally with the Mountain People..."

Luna scowled in confusion. "But—"

"I..." Clarke couldn't say it.

_I killed them._

_All._

_I_ _**eliminated**  _ _them._

Luna's attitude reminded Clarke of Finn. She could feel him in the room with her and she _couldn't say it_. "I just won. We do have their weapons."

Luna stared back her in awe. "But how? With no army inside or out? I was told there were less than fifty of you inside and only a handful at the battle. This was why Leksa—"

" _Lexa_ ," Clarke's eyes went cold, her voice rigid and fierce, "underestimated me and my people. That's how. I only needed a handful."

Luna stared at her then for a long moment. Something deep and serious passed behind her eyes.

When Clarke started to get uncomfortable in the silence under her penetrating look, Luna finally spoke. "Then you are not safe, Klark…Alone, out here. As soon as word of this spreads you will be a target."

"For who?"

"For many, and it is impossible to know who right now." Luna paused. "Especially if..."

"If what?"

Luna was silent for a moment. "I am sorry..." She seemed legitimately reproachful, and her voice took a blunt edge for the sake of courtesy. "But there was a rumor that you and Leksa were _'allied'_ in more than just politics.*"

Clarke's heart hammered in her chest. She got angry. But she didn't want to project it onto Luna. "Where did you hear that?"

"Whispers travel on the wind like seeds."

"What if we were? If we weren't? What would it matter?" Her voice was rushed and incensed but she tried to tame it with hardness. "This is about war, and if that _were_ true, it would be no one's business but ours."

"Maybe so. But a person's heart can be used against them to  _win_ wars. This is why my people fear its power."

The images of Dante's face when Clarke had threatened him, of her mother strapped to a table, flashed before her eyes.

"The power of the heart is immense," Luna said, "but it is unstable. Like your guns and bombs."

"Lexa doesn't _have_ my heart," Clarke snapped.

Luna allowed the statement to settle on the air before speaking. "Can you be sure you do not have hers?"

Clarke didn't respond to that.

"The Ice Queen, _Islin_ , is using such talk against Leksa. To turn the People against her. She has been seeking weaknesses in the Commander's lead for a long time now. This war with you and The Mountain has offered many more moments of decision from her, for Islin to twist for her own desires. Especially the missile at _Tondisi_ , and the rumors around your survival." Luna's eyes danced into hers again. "Important Ice leaders died there. That is a strong emotional motivator for the public, and leaves voids of power."

Clarke shook her head. "That doesn't make sense. Lexa was completely loyal to you all. She betrayed me because of it."

Luna was calm and her words reserved when she spoke, her eyes never leaving Clarke's over the table. "She tells that you and _Heda_ knew of the attack, and fled together on purpose. To thin out command and seize control together for yourselves."

"That's _ridiculous_." Clarke spoke before she could think. "I would never let hundreds of people die for my own…" the last word almost tripped her up as she'd grabbed for the right one, "ego." She was unsettled by the way the words sat in her own mouth.

"Perhaps not. But the Ice Queen would." Luna absently sipped her tea again. "It is one of her less attractive, defining traits. Hence why she would be quick to paint it on her enemies."

Clarke noted that Luna was intelligent: not just witty, but _experienced_.

"Many things do not make sense," Luna said, "but that does not mean the Ice Queen won't use them. That is what she does. She uses everything she can and turns people against one another." Her next sip was swallowed bitterly. "She is a tyrant, not a leader."

"You don't like her very much, do you?"

"I spit on her practices—and I would cut them to pieces before giving them that much. Many more ruthless than I spit on them as well. She is not like Leksa. She is not even like the harsh Commander who came before Leksa. She is cruel, thrives on chaos and takes from others for herself on a spiritual level. She does not have any compassion."

This was weird for Clarke. Because 'pacifist' Luna was talking about Lexa like she was a Saint. "And Lexa does?"

Luna's head cocked. She regarded Clarke curiously at the question. "Perhaps you did not come to know Leksa the way many think you did…"

Clarke was ruffled by Luna's insinuations and took offense. She furrowed her brow at Luna, her voice dropping into a steamy, threatening whisper that made it personal. "Have _you_?"

Luna stared silently back, as Clarke's eyes _seethed_ into her.

Clarke thought that might have actually been fear buried in Luna's gaze— _Good._ If Clarke couldn't be whole, at least she could be dangerous. She knew her own statement was rude. That's why she'd made it with a threatening smolder and a wide arc of subtext. She didn't care what, or who, Lexa 'did'…maybe a little.

But a moment later, Luna was smiling more coyly than ever over her tea, her eyes twinkling again. "Maybe you did."

Clarke actually did roll her eyes this time.

It was very hard to maintain a formidable attitude while ' _The Sea Queen'_ spoke to her like an intrigued schoolmate. She wasn't acting like a Grounder, sitting on the floor, with the sound of waves in the background, sipping tea, and practically winking at her.

It occurred to Clarke that this could have been exactly _why_ she'd risen to power in the first place, and that Luna was someone she should carefully watch.

Clarke thought about how badly Finn had wanted to leave, how he'd tried to persuade her to come here. How _close_ they'd gotten to that, walking beside each other in the forest before they'd been pushed back. Something primordial lodged in Clarke's throat and almost wouldn't let go.

How different would things be if they _had_ all gotten here _?_

It was like that Finn was a completely different person than the one she'd said goodbye to, something fractured and caught in the past that Clarke hadn't been allowed to integrate. And _that_ Finn would have liked it here. A lot.

"I did not mean to offend you, Klark," Luna said. "But these are all things you needed to know."

Clarke said nothing, just kept her gaze even and fixed on Luna.

"We have no interest in getting involved with more than we must here in Chesa. You may stay and leave whenever you like. And I will do my best to keep you safe. I am sure you are tired after your travels."

"Am I putting your people in danger?"

"My people are already in danger. But one is easier to hide than many, and Leksa has spread word that the punishment for harming a Sky Person without provocation is the same as treason."

Clarke arched her brow at this and then scoffed.

"You are intelligent, Klark." Luna set down the tea she'd been sipping on. "As valuable as they are? I would advise you not to let your feelings cloud your judgement. Whether they be bitter _or_ sweet. Leksa is the best kind of Commander we are going to get. The best we have had in one hundred years. I would caution that you do not want to make an enemy of her."

The words raged in Clarke's head— _If she was as good of a leader as you think she is, she wouldn't have made an enemy out of_ ** _ME_** —It was difficult for her not to say this out loud, as it thundered through her own ears. But she knew how it would sound, and that its source was her spite.

Clarke _was_ actually capable of separating personal from politics. She just didn't care anymore. But she knew deep down, putting her people in danger after everything she'd done to save them would be a monumental mistake.

"You are still at war with the past," Luna said.

"What?" Clarke's attention snapped back to the room.

"Your eyes are heavy with battle wounds and the fire of war."

Clarke softened a little and stared back at Luna's receptive gaze, reevaluating her misgivings.

"You have not healed yet from the injuries of Mount Weather."

Clarke's heart rose up into her throat and her eyes darted away.

"We must do this before we fight again. Just like healing our wounded flesh. It makes us strong again, _Fisa.*_ "

Clarke couldn't look at her, she couldn't bring herself to note that her soul was disfigured beyond repair. "You can't get stronger if you lose something important, like an arm…" she whispered, despite her better judgement.

"Yes. You learn to live with only one. And next time, you do not lose it."

 _We all have to find our own braces_. Clarke shook herself. Raven had been trying to help, but she'd been wrong.

Some things weren't fixable.

"Make yourself at home. Drink that tea, you have many worries and it will help you sleep soundly. I will send word among my people that your presence here is to be kept silent upon grave penalty. We can speak more of alliances and possibilities in the morning." Luna stood up gracefully.

Clarke sniffed at the tea again.

Luna glanced between her and the cup. "Do you think I will poison you and sell you to the Ice Queen?"

Clarke stared at the cup and then back up at her.

Luna chuckled. "Would you like mine?"

"No thanks. Not really afraid of dying anymore."

Luna hesitated. "I do not wish to leave you on a bad note tonight…but being captured by the Ice Queen is not death. It _is_ something you should fear. Even the strongest of our warriors carry hidden daggers when at war with Azgeda, in case this does happen to them. To stab themselves in the neck before it can."

Clarke's eyes flicked up to Luna and stayed there. She swallowed a sip of the tea—it was good. _Really_ good. "She sounds like a real bitch. Someone should kill her,"

"We're trying."

 

-x-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **TRIGEDASLENG TRANSLATIONS:**   
> 
> 
>   
>  CANON:
> 
>  **  
> **  
>  _*Fisa_  
>  - _Healer_
> 
> HEADCANONED:
> 
>  **  
> **  
>  _*'alliance'_  
>  \- Luna's subtleties may be lost on Clarke, but in trigedasleng the word for alliance is 'hukop' from 'hook-up', I like to assume 'allying' has a similar alternate or colloquial meaning that still implies sexual and/or romantic pairing, depending on the context of use.


	3. ' THE SOLACE OF CAGES '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Soundtrack for the first part of this chapter is Tribal Drums, Tricky, and What Was Meant To Be, Olafur Arnalds for the end.—[Full 8Tracks Soundtrack](http://www.8tracks.com/arcanda/what-the-water-gave-me)**  
>  Special thanks to the lovely [Dreamincolor](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamincolor/works) for all the betaing & support <3

* * *

**—-x-—**

 

By the next morning, Clarke felt slightly more human. But a depletion of some of the physical grit and misery that had been shielding her from herself caused a dissonance inside of her.

Luna had personally shown Clarke her way around the amenities and practical minutia. There was something powerful in the simple action of the city's leader giving her a lighthearted tour of the bathroom facilities, and instructing her how to steam water on the glowing-hot rocks that _seikru_ took inside from the central fires, to heat the chilly night. The gracious, informal attitude about such basic, and personal things simulated automatic trust.

Clarke knew Luna was conscious of this but she wondered how intentionally she was doing it.

She was pretty grateful, either way, for the weird slurry and tangy sticks the grounders used for washing teeth, and for the warm wash-bin that had appeared in her room while they'd been outside. Hundred year old, digital-era, powdered soap—in a frigid river with her trigger finger at the ready—was one thing: she'd gone through the water in that wash-bin pretty quickly.

"Are you always this careful?" Luna approached Clarke from behind, chewing casually on something.

She must have seen Clarke sitting there at the breakfast spread, not touching anything, neck straight, eyes darting around at everything going on like some kind of visiting overseer.

Luna plopped a serving of something sitting on the table in front of Clarke, onto an oyster and inhaled it as she sat on the bench beside Clarke, leaning with her back against the table.

"In my experience," Clarke said looking over at Luna as she chewed, "if something seems too good to be true. It is."

Luna swallowed and then laughed. "I will be sure to tell the cooks and fishers you think so."

"You haven't had guards on me. Why?"

"Is there a reason I need to?" Luna took a sip of the cup of water she'd been carrying. "You are a guest here."

"Last person who said that to me tried to hunt me down like an animal and turned my people into the main course. He ended up with one of my bullets in his chest."

Luna was paying careful attention but she didn't seemed perturbed by Clarke's look.

"And _he_ had chocolate."

Luna smiled at the comment for a fleeting moment before it was wiped from her face when she responded. " _Linkon_ is alive because you granted him sanctuary. You think I do not see that— _Ey_ ,"she yelled across the way to some kids, " _nou rip disha hen op!_ —If he is treated as one of your own, in your city, you will be treated this way in mine. Unless you give me reason otherwise."* She reached across the table and put something in front of Clarke.

Luna may have been mischievous, but she didn't strike Clarke as reckless. She decided she was just going to assume that the Seikru guarding her were sneaky. It still unnerved her.

"It is wise, on earth, to eat a large breakfast when you can, Klark. Especially as a warrior or leader…you do not know what will happen during the day."

Clarke thought that almost sounded like a threat, but Luna's tone certainly hadn't. After all of the grief, Luna's attitude was disquieting. It seemed so unfamiliar that it actually unsettled her. "And how exactly do you know Lincoln?"

"We share a mother."

Clarke's mouth fluttered in surprise. "He's your brother?"

"In some ways."

"I…I didn't know that. He didn't…Is he from here originally? From Chesa?"

"I did not know him well. His father was _Trikru_ and sent him to Polis when we were both still very young. Back then, the _Trigeda_ were allies, and our leading Commanders before Leksa were hard, militant leaders."

_Wasn't that what Lexa was?_

"We were at war with the Ice and Sand People, and the people to the west of Polis, north of the River People, who were either killed or disbanded. The _Seigedakru_ are peaceful at heart, but Linkon's father thought he was too soft, traded him as an apprentice to the warriors in _Tondisi_ to make him strong."

"And your mother just let him?"

"They were not close. Linkon spent most of his life with his father, as _Triku._ Though I suspect that because my mother became the _Seigeda_ leader, he was never quite treated at home among them. She cared for him but was busy and most often far away. By the time it was decided he would be a warrior for _Trigeda_ she was already dead."

Clarke glanced down respectfully but Luna seemed unfazed.

"Linkon has always been getting in trouble for defying orders."

"Funny," Clarke mumbled sarcastically "I don't seem to have that issue with him. Maybe the problem was with the people _giving_ the orders." She wasn't actually sure if she'd ever thought of herself as having authority over Lincoln, but maybe that was the point. He was loyal and one of the most dependable people she knew. She trusted him the way she trusted Octavia.

Luna side glanced her but didn't say anything. "He once stole a young horse and tried to run away with it when the people were starving, so it wouldn't be eaten. His father made him butcher it himself."

"Weren't you worried about him before?"

Luna nodded and expelled a hefty breath. "Linkon has a kind soul. He is strong. And he may speak otherwise, but he should be making life, not taking it."

Clarke nodded. All she could think about was Lincoln's sketch book. At what point had she failed to see something like that as anything more than a practical tool? For the first time she wondered if the tallies in it over her people's deaths were a sign of mourning rather than a to-do list.

"Do not be shy. It is harvest time and we have much food."

"Yeah, I noticed."

The table in front of Clarke was packed with locally mined staples: smoked fishes, shellfish and properly prepared oysters, sea vegetables that tasted surprisingly good, fats and spices that Clarke wished she knew the origins of, because they made everything taste like a meal instead of a chore. That was a notion that had always been a luxury in her life, whether on the ground or the Ark.

She'd attributed her experiences of food at Mount Weather to decadence: pre-bomb cultural hold overs. But this was _different_. There was joy, security, and an earthy human normalcy that had never made it to her people's camps as they scraped for survival. Not even after plentiful kills. There was only so much of the same animal or cache of berries you could eat before it lost its luster.

_This?_ Blew Clarke's mind a little.

She could barely bring herself to sit there and get the food down, more or less feel like she deserved to partake in it. It chiseled at her heart in the hollow space she'd come to inhabit that now felt like her appointed prison. Even on a purely physical level, it was a little too rich and substantial after the past couple of months.

"The cooks' seconds will not clear it until you have had your fill."

Clarke nodded. "Thanks." She watched as Luna poured something from a container on the table into her cup. "Is that...real milk?"

Luna's eyes danced up to hers, both amused and a little proud. "Yes. Fresh." She poured some into another cup on the table, and slid it in front of Clarke as she rose. "Try some before the cream has all been taken. Caution is good, Klark. But judgement is better on a full stomach. You may have the strength to run for your life, if you slit my throat _after_ you have eaten."

_Was that a joke?_

Luna shifted behind her and started pointing at things informing Clarke what was in them. "And that is eggs, with deer and berries."

Luna wasn't kidding about the harvest. The table was overflowing with farmed things. To the point Clarke, with her portioned conditioning, thought it had to be wasteful. But it answered the question she'd had about the grounders practicing any kind agriculture. "Real eggs..." she mumbled.

"You have had eggs before, yes, Klark?"

"No. Only fake...um, space-eggs."

Luna's smile became broad again. "Then you are lucky you are in Chesa…Eggs will make you full and strong," she encouraged, sliding the large flat wooden bowl closer. "I am not sure I want to know what kind of bird _spase-egs_ come from. Have you tasted bacon?" Luna reached down the table and pulled another platter in front of her.

"Not yet…" Despite herself, the joyful glint splashing off of Luna was beginning to work its way under Clarke's skin a little.

She spooned some of the egg dish onto her plate, then looked up in question at Luna who was still watching her.

Luna jerked her head a little at the platter with a sly smile. "I want to see your face when you try the bacon. It was just smoked yesterday,"

Clarke took a piece of bacon off the platter, to appease Luna more than anything.

"From the first boar Pax took; sweet—"

Clarke failed to suppress the low moan that pressed up out of her throat after she took the first bite. "Ohm'God…" She leaned her elbow on the table, with her fist to her mouth as she chewed. Her body was suddenly betraying her sadistic mind, her cells crying out for more of whatever exquisite thing she'd just given it a taste of, and she had to viscerally suppress the urge to start scarfing down half the platter.

Luna was beaming at her. "We do not always prepare this much food ahead, but the Sky Commander is present, and we are trying to show off."

Clarke nodded as she chewed. "It's working…"

Luna began to shift out of her chair. "Enjoy the morning sun...while we still have warmth. There are things I must do. I will find you for lunch, yes? Then we will talk about nations."

Clarke knew Luna was acting way too nonchalant about her presence and stalling politics on purpose. She just didn't know _why._

 

* * *

 

A long time passed that day before Clarke was able to have a serious conversation with Luna. She was busy and had been out amongst her people doing this or that, helping them with stores for the winter. At least that's what she told Clarke. Though considering Clarke herself was stalling, the only reason she minded was because it meant she was stuck in her body, sitting there, alone with her thoughts. Nothing to hunt. No shelter to prepare, miles to hike, weapons to steal…

Luna was the only one Clarke had been getting to know. At all. It was a little awkward without her, and the non-physical isolation followed Clarke around and pressed down heavily upon her.

Clarke supposed she was doing that to herself somewhat intentionally. She _had_ left her gun—very carefully hidden—back at her bungalow as a gesture of good faith, though she wasn't about to take off her holster. She still couldn't fathom that it hadn't been taken away from her. When she'd asked, Luna's only response was that she _'didn't believe Clarke was stupid enough to do something stupid.'_ Regardless, Clarke's attitude was enough: her stony silences, the metal walls she had permanently built up around her, and the somber, threatening expression that must have been constantly set on her face.

_Dragon?_

It wasn't really a surprise that the _Seikru_ didn't approach her. It wasn't as if they themselves were cold. They were generally lighter and warmer than even her own people at this point.

Clarke wanted to break herself open with a sledge hammer and leave the fractured pieces discarded. To climb out of them and leave them behind like a useless molting. To sink away into the _Seikru's_ warmth and casual folly, and become one with their soft smiles.

This wasn't who she used to be.

She thought of Wells for the first time in a long time, but not nearly the first since she'd left her people. ' _I'm_ _FUN **.'**_ The meaningless words pawed at her heart in a somber and empty way, and took on a character they were never meant to take. It lodged in her throat when she thought of him. He didn't belong to the ground. He belonged to a desperate longing for colorful paintings and her father—which a phantom part of her, deep, deep inside and mingled with injustice, longed to grab desperately ahold of like it was a fight for her very survival.

The sunlight on the water in Chesa that morning had reminded Clarke of the way it gleamed off of Earth at the crack of dawn in space. Despite the imprisonment of the Ark, there had been something so comforting about it—hiding in nooks and crannies by a window with whatever art supplies she could get her hands on, her biggest cares drawing and wanting to be free—innocent and safe.

The discovery, that having a cage to push against for freedom, was full of more life than none at all, was one of the most depressing of her adult-revelations. Clarke didn't want to be free anymore.

She wanted to be intact.

Around noon when people were drifting around to fetch food or relax, Luna ambled over to Clarke where she sat restlessly watching the activity on a jetty by the beach.

"I'm sorry I disappeared on you, Klark. There was an accident with the nets, and things to attend to."

"It's okay. I was enjoying the peace." It was only half a lie. She was adjusting to the atmosphere, like a dream. It was giving her culture shock, messing with her head, but it _was_ nice. It didn't make much difference that it lodged a ball of yarn in her throat, because these days pretty much everything did.

"Yes." Luna smiled at her. "I like to spend the time to remind myself what I am fighting for, before I talk of warriors and nations."

Clarke noted for the fifth time that morning the fresh, _sweet,_ salty air flooding her senses. She looked over at Luna. "That's wise of you." Maybe that was what she needed more of. It certainly felt like it. Clarke hadn't felt more like an actual alien on Earth before than she did here: in the sun, smiles, and relaxation of _Seikru_. She still didn't necessarily trust them.

"Are you hungry?" Luna asked.

"No."

Someone called for Luna. "Ah, one moment, Klark…" she said with a quick gesture that she'd be right back. She drifted off a short distance towards the buzz and people, directing various things in _trigedasleng_ , smiles thrown in here or there. Clarke stayed where she was and watched her in action. They seemed to speak a more colloquial version of the language that was more difficult for her to try to understand.

It wasn't until then that Clarke realized one of the children Luna had been carrying around on her shoulders earlier was _hers_.

The boy escaped from the cluster of people where Luna was busy talking to someone, and waddled over to Clarke. Luna smiled on at him from a distance, only half paying attention. He methodically held out a handful of dripping, gooey seaweed and plunked it in Clarke's hand, then looked back up at her expectantly.

"I'm… Thank you," Clarke said, looking between him and the muck in her outstretched hand.

After a moment of blankness hiding behind his thumb, he beamed the brightest little radiant, embarrassed smile. Then he squealed and giggled, as he twisted around the thumb he was half sucking and ran back to Luna's leg. When Luna approached Clarke he hid coyly behind her legs, poking his head out every now and then with a big, silly smile at Clarke from behind his thumb.

Clarke turned and set the clump of seaweed carefully next to her on the rock she was sitting on and gave it a little pat for him. "Hey," she said, keeping her eyes level with the kid and addressing him directly, "what's your name?"

He giggled again. "Klak?" He shot a quick glance up at Luna.

Luna nodded down at him. "Yes, _Klaksoa kom Skaikru_."

The boy became bashful, and hid behind her leg again. Luna tutted him and commanded something in the heavily accented _'seisleng'_ that Clarke couldn't decipher.

"Oh! Sorry, he doesn't know English does he?"

"He is learning," Luna said. "You will find, Klark, that the farther away you get from Trigeda territory, the more that English is not only for warriors and their healers." Luna muttered something in the _seisleng_ again to him that had Clarke's name sandwiched in it, then nudged him playfully. She pushed him away as he tried to hide behind her leg, making a game of it until he was standing on his own.

"Hai Klak," he said.

"Klark…" Clarke said with a smile.

"He knows." Luna seemed amused. "He does not care. He will not stop calling you that." Her eyes darted down to him, soft pride on her lips "He is a trickster." She looked up at Clarke and elaborated, "Your name sounds like our word for 'lightning,' you see. ' _Klak.'"_

"Ai…Ren," he said to Clarke, still adorably bashful if not proud.

"Ai' _m_ Ren," Luna muttered in correction to him..

"That's a nice name." Clarke was unable to contain the smile she was radiating back at Wren.

But it didn't last.

The smile dropped instantly from Clarke's lips—she was hit out of nowhere—everything around her replaced by the image of the toddlers at Mount Weather crying and writhing on the floor in pain as they burned.

Her face went haunted and ashen. Tears and vocal anguish sank so deep inside of her they didn't even press to come out.

And she almost threw up.

Clarke bolted to her feet as soon as she was able to force the message to reach her brain. "I—" She couldn't contain any of it: there was an ocean of turmoil inside of her, raging up from her depths and washing her away. She couldn't breathe. "Ha _ve-to…_ " It was the only thing she'd managed to get out before her feet were carrying her down the stony beach toward the cover of rocky cliffs where she broke into a run, heart knocking against her chest.

When Clarke was far enough away that people wouldn't see her and think she was insane, she fell hard to ground. Her hands and knees scrapped on the rocks around her as she did. Her ears clogged. She couldn't hear anything anymore. She was hyperventilating. The world around her spun and scraped, _screaming_ filling up all of the air. Her vision tunneled. She was on the verge of dry heaving.

When Clarke did break in half and the tears started to wrench out of her in ragged spasms of their own they didn't stop, wouldn't stop.

Clarke clung ahold of her self, fisting her hands in her own flesh, and fell apart in the sand.

-x-

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   **TRIGEDASLENG TRANSLATIONS**  
> 
> 
>  
> 
>   _ ***"Ey, nou rip disha hen op!"** \- "Hey, do not murder that chicken!"_
> 
>  HEADCANONED:
> 
>   _ **hen** \- chicken_
> 
>   _ **klak** \- lightning_
> 
>   _ **soa** \- bird_
> 
>   _ **Klaksoa kom Skaikru** \- Lightning-bird; Dragon of the Sky People_


	4. ' FLOAT '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hello lovelies. I'm back. ::DEEP fortifying breath:: So, canon… It took me a while to be able to handle writing again (at all, with anything) and return to this. Lots of processing in this chapter. I was concerned before that maybe Clarks’s solo healing was drawing out a little too long, but post-3x07, it feels right, and I'm hoping this might actually be helpful for some people. I know returning to Luna/Chesa is already proving helpful for me. Bless you, Clexakru ::mocking jay salute::**
> 
> **The first half of this fic is Clarke/Luna heavy and the second half is Lexa/Clexa heavy. As always I’d love to know what you think.**
> 
> **Soundtrack for this chapter: What Was Meant to Be, Olafur Arnalds | Closed Doors, Message to Bears[Full 8Tracks Soundtrack](http://www.8tracks.com/arcanda/what-the-water-gave-me)**

* * *

**—-x-—**

 

A great deal of time later, Clarke was still in the same spot.

She had turned on her side, and was staring absently into the gray sea, arms holding herself fragilely together. Her head rested against the cold sand, and the slick stones impacted in the ground beneath her.

She'd lost a good deal spit and snot into the ground along with all of the tears—had offered it, almost like a pathetic, desperate prayer—not bothering to wipe it away as she fell apart, and fisted her hands in the ground. Just trying to get it out: _get it out._

Any shred of anything inside of her that would budge, _out_.

Like maybe it was her last chance to find any solace for the feelings clinging deep inside of her like violent tumors she could not expel, but that would kill her if she left them there. Clarke laid like that for longer than she was aware. She stared at the sea: swallowing the earth and wiping it clean. Churning it back up again. She contemplated walking into it and floating away. Never coming back. Just _floating away._

Her father’s voice filtered distantly, rhetorically, into her head.  _'Don't do it, kid.’_

It was a blanket statement that meant so much more in its simplicity than anything that actually had to do with this ocean in front of her. And it was a gift. Because she hadn’t remembered what her father’s voice sounded like. Thinking of her father, of his spirit—of his voice—in all of this, tore a fresh hole through her that made her feel like a small, hurt child who couldn’t stop crying.

_'Just get yourself together.'_

She couldn't.

She laid there until she was cold. Then she laid there until she wasn’t anymore. Until the trembling in her body dyed down, to become one with the cold, damp stones and sand beneath her.

Just about when the cold started to wrack back up into her spine again, to turn to involuntary trembles despite how hard she squeezed herself together, a voice emanated from somewhere far away. It was muffled by the embankment over the beach.

“Klark…?”

Clarke didn't say anything. But she knew it was time to get up. She wiped at her face first, checking on autopilot for signs that she was in horrid disrepair. Her hands had been curled against her body in an infantile position, so she burrowed them into her sleeves instead.

“Klark?” The voice was apprehensive, respectful.

She could feel Luna's presence gaining on her, hovering back over the cliff. Clarke rolled up on her side to sit, and pulled her fisted hands against herself, like everything was fine, never taking her eyes off the ocean as she did.

Luna cleared her voice politely before she manifested within eyesight.

"Sorry,” Clarke croaked, with a wavering voice, though she tried not to. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "Did I scare…him?” It was hard to even utter the pronoun right now; it stuck in her throat and threatened to break her.

"No." Luna came closer to her, still hanging back.

When Clarke glanced up at her she was surprised to see the tempered, but deep seated concern sewn behind Luna's eyes. Not disapproval or offense, or even anger. It wasn't sterile or overbearing, either. Just genuine.

Clarke realized now that Luna seemed so different because she didn't hide her softer emotions like the other grounders. She controlled them, but she didn't hide them.

“Something upset you.” Luna settled near Clarke. She stayed respectfully back from her, like the circumference of Clarke’s aura was a thing to be respected. One that required an invitation.

They both stared at the ocean.

“I’m fine.” Clarke attempted to clear her throat, but it didn’t work very well. “I just um…I just needed some air.” She realized how stupid it sounded. There was an abundance of ‘air’ in Chesa. It was the only thing she could think of that didn’t sound horribly weak.

Clarke cleared her throat a little more successfully this time. “I’ve been traveling alone for a long time, my social skills aren’t the b—” she stumbled over her words when she saw Luna looking at her steadily, right through her bullshit, “…best.”

Luna’s gaze turned back to the sea, her voice soft and unassuming, “You are haunted.” It was all she said.

Clarke’s eyes flicked to her. She didn’t have a response, just accepted it, her heart weighing heavily in the wake of the words.

“Do you need anything?” Luna asked, her voice itself a soft breeze. She was still staring steadily out at the sea, her chest held graceful and high.

Clarke needed a lot of things.

She needed to pause the world. To stop it from spinning. To stop the _time_ and _change_ around her with it. She needed to cry and scream and melt into the ground like the water did, falling between the sand.

She needed to crawl into a warm embrace where _home_ somehow existed again and was innocent, was untarnished, unshaken; bathed in the hues of all the things she used to imagine, and paint. She needed to laugh with her father again, and be content with dreams, where the days were long and the future full of the promise she’d previously taken for granted.

Instead of death.

She needed to not be afraid of the destiny that awaited her, to believe she actually mattered. What she needed was to crawl back into the womb and never come back.

“No,” Clarke said, her eyes boring into the water. “I’m fine.”

 

* * *

 

When Clarke had made it past Polis, the terrain had broken into an empty coastal plain. It seemed like a different planet; that she must be the last person alive.

She had a destination for the first time. It made the trek bitter-sweet and eerie. It weighed in her, in the salty air, in a way the forest hadn’t given her space for—the ocean flooded in around her senses with its static—the edge for survival, from everything bombarding her on the outside, fell out of her teeth and claws. It brought her heart back into her throat. It drowned her in the din of silence in the air and the sand under her feet.

At a certain point, Clarke could no longer stand the weight of Finn’s metal deer. It cut into her insides, the same way it had been cutting into her skin before she’d taken it off her neck. The weight of emotion inside her in this alien setting, was bubbling up in her throat and finding a scapegoat in the deer. And its insistence reached a fever pitch inside of her.

She ripped at her bag. The sky and sand swallowed the yell of frustration that tore out of her beaten-down throat on its own volition, because her voice had been so strangled and shut up for weeks. She fell to her knees where she was walking, ignoring the primal sobs inside of her—up until now the tightened fibers in her body had won out to hold them back—and she clawed at everything, tried to tear the deer free. She barely registered cutting her hand in the process.

When the deer was finally in her hands, its weight brought her the rest of the way to the ground on top of it. She cried in anguish—no longer caring if someone heard and shot her—and she wished with everything she had left that the tears would actually get all of the feelings, memories, and despair _out_ of her but it wasn’t working.

Clarke looked at the hard metal deer in spite, remembering the living one she’d seen that day with Finn, Monty, Octavia and Jasper: its face.

Clarke slammed the deer down into the hard packed sand, disregarding any damage she did to herself. When the pain slipped from her mind and was barely an issue anymore, she slammed it down as hard as she could and clawed at the ground. It turned into desperate digging.  

                                    

* * *

 

Luna stood in silence with Clarke for a long moment, one of her arms tucked across her body under the other.

“What does _‘klaksoa’_ mean?” Clarke asked, also still staring at the water.

“The Commander of Lightning.”

“Thought I was a dragon.”

“Same thing. _Klaksoa_ , lightning bird. _Klakeda kom Skaikru_. Things the people have taken to calling you. Stories of you, about your alliance, inspire the imagination. It is said you sent burning stars into the village in the woods to get Heda’s attention.”

“People died in that fire.”

Luna only nodded, solemn.

"Is he…afraid of me?”

Luna shook her head. "No."

Clarke swallowed something down inside of her though she didn’t know what. "Are you sure?"

"You may have a reputation amongst my people, Klark. but it is not quite as a monster. If that kind of fear is what you are looking for you will have to try harder.”  Luna released her arms at her sides. “You showed strength defending yourself. Our people were liberated and made well again because of you, hundreds thought lost, returned.”

“I’ve killed just as many of your people.”

“And most of them were warriors who were attacking you, were they not? It is a risk any warrior takes by the nature of their being. But you returned innocents to the neighbors who have been haunted by all of that loss.”

Luna took a long stable breath, turning to Clarke. “You must understand, Klark. The _Maunon_ were great enemies to us for many generations—much of our culture was _built_ on their threat. Our children told nightmarish stories, that were more truth than fiction, to keep them safe. Among our people now, you are respected. To be feared in the ways our Heda is to be feared, not in the ways of the _Maunon_.”

Clarke was sullen when she responded, her eyes cold. "You don't know that."

She could tell the statement made Luna nervous. Luna didn’t say anything.

Clarke struggled to speak when she sensed Luna would leave on that note if she didn’t. "I...I've done some terrible things."

Luna nodded sympathetically. “War asks terrible things of us. We do what we must, but we must hold on to ourselves even as we do."

"And if we can't?"

"Then someone else will take our place who may be more terrible than we are."

Clarke let the statement sink into her bones and rattle there.

“Klark.”

Clarke looked up at her.

“Monsters kill for sport. Feeling the weight of the things you have done, means you are not one. If you no longer could? That is when you should be worried about what you have become.”

 

* * *

 

When the earth had turned to clay under Clarke’s feral hands, matching her own strength as she tried to tear it open, she collapsed again over the hole. She cried until she had nothing left. Even then it didn’t matter. Even then her mind was still sitting there waiting for her to finish her fruitless actions, still in control.

Clarke may have already said goodbye to Finn, but she hadn't had time to process. Barely even the meaning of him entering her life; more or less Lexa barreling into it, sword raised and primal fire in her deep, maddening eyes.

Clarke raised her head from where it was pressed against the ground. Air quivered in and out of her lungs. Clenching the deer in her hand, she used the jagged edges to tear just a little deeper into clay packed at the bottom of her hole. She pressed it down into the earth as far as it would go, and let go of it. Clarke smoothed the coarse sand over, and patted her hands against it, taking a moment in the process, to not bother repressing the sob that caught her off guard and bubbled up past her throat.

She let herself feel it.

She was in a desolate tract of sandy shores and sea with no company but the wind, and she didn't have a reason not to anymore.

Clarke ignored the truths of history, and consequences, and let herself _feel_. Nostalgia, love. Some sense of home and comfort that had seemed _so_ fleeting, meager, and insufficient at the time, and now seemed like a tidal-wave she would never, _could_ never return to.

It was fitting that this piece of Finn would find its way to Chesa and leave her here forever: be eaten by the indomitable ocean and taken back by the earth.

Clarke let herself cry some more without thinking, with no particular attachment but generalized grief. Then she leveled her chin back in the air, her feet on the ground, and kept heading south towards the City of the Sea.

 

* * *

 

Luna left Clarke to the beach, in honor of Clarke’s tentative request to take a walk, alone:

_'I just…need to clear my head before we talk about anything that matters.'_

_'We are not speaking about things that matter right now?'_

_'I meant…'_

_'I know. Politics. Take your time. If I am not in the city-center when you return just ask someone for me.'_

Clarke wondered if maybe Luna was too accommodating for her own good. She wandered farther and farther away from the city into desolate shores after Luna left her. Her head was now pressed against a boulder that had been swallowed by the sand, its surface all that was left to the world. It was the sole object at the blurred corner of her vision as the ocean crashed in the distance in front of her like it was the only thing that existed.

Her eyes flicked down to the hard rock surface beneath her; breeze whipping at her hair and a chill beginning to sink into her bones. It smelled like sea: crisp, sour, and salty, and something all its own. Clarke’s mind drifted, searching for any kind of pointer or solution. Something to hold on to.

She poked at the sand in the dip and cracks of the rock in front of her face and started wiping it away with her finger. The skin on her face was taut with the salt from her own, silent, used-up tears. The tracks had fled across her face with gravity from the corners of her eyes to the rock beneath her.

An itch to move seeped into her body that she ignored as long as she could.

She needed to keep going.

Being here, she was representing her people right now whether she was still a part of that or not. She couldn’t just stick her head in the sand—literally—and ignore that, no matter how badly she wished she could.

It was time for her to get up. For real: to wrangle will power she constantly believed she should no longer have and go through the motions. Because curling into the side of a cliff and staying there until she disappeared wasn’t an option. Clarke righted herself and shivered.

She slowly made her way back towards the voices and sporadic drum noises of Chesa. A din of life, that was constricting in different ways than isolation and silence.

She would have to accept the ugly face attached to her now. She didn’t have a choice in how she’d incarnated, she could isolate herself and try to cover it up all she wanted. But there was nothing she could do to make it disappear.

 

-x-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRIGEDASLENG TRANSLATIONS**   
> 
> 
> CANON:
> 
> _**Heda** \- Commander; leader_
> 
> _**Maunon** \- the Mountain People_


	5. ' HONEY & SALT '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This took me longer to get up because I’ve been on hiatus for an immersive method-acting vision quest as Lexa, but…that’s another bag of worms. Just couldn’t handle writing at the same time (esp in Clarke’s pov). Longer chapter. Might be worth knowing, there’s a lot of set-up in this fic for the sequel. Lexa isn’t quite here yet, but she will be very soon.**
> 
> **SOUNDTRACK for this chapter: Life & Death by Paul Cardall—[Full 8Tracks Soundtrack](http://8tracks.com/arcanda/what-the-water-gave-me)**
> 
> **Content Warning in endnote.**

* * *

 — **-x-** —

  

“I still wanna know what you would have done,” Clarke said, as she trailed behind Luna up a thin, grown-in path, “if I'd had time to get my people here when Lincoln sent us. ”They were ascending a rocky bluff that overlooked the ocean in the distance. Luna had mysteriously led her here, on the outskirts of Chesa, because she ‘wanted to show her something’.

She was still being incredibly blasé and casual, considering what should have been at stake between them politically. To the point that if Luna wasn’t so sharp and clear-eyed—and Clarke didn’t have the constant nagging impression she was ten steps ahead of everyone around her—she would have wondered what kind of herbs were in that tea Luna was always sipping on. “I am good at talking,” Luna said simply.

Clarke navigated around several branches that grew carelessly over the steep, narrow path and watched her step, so as not to trip on the rocks or underbrush.

“If you discarded your weapons,” Luna said, “I would have put you to work and attempted to persuade Leksa not to kill you, without getting executed for treason. But, Klark,” Luna paused, turning pointedly over her shoulder to look at her, “would you really have put down your weapons?”

Clarke looked back at her for a pause before saying, “I’m good at talking too.”

 

 

The path veered a little deeper into the woods and opened up to trees and boulders, becoming deeper-set, and the view at the edge of the cliff they’d ascended was more obscured. Clarke caught her breath—not bothering to question why Luna had stopped—though she wasn’t nearly as winded by the hike as she would have been a couple of months ago. “How can you afford to stay so neutral…among people that are so harsh and unforgiving?”

"We have other sources of strength,” Luna said, “than violence."

At a gesture, Clarke looked more closely around her. She slowly began to realize what she was looking at. She squinted, her head thrown back, and surveyed the lofts of the trees and cliffs. "Bees…?” she breathed.

The hives didn't look like anything Clarke had seen before in books or movies. And neither did the bees, which she could now see buzzing around above them. They were much bigger. The hives were sprawling and crafty, hidden everywhere in caves and the trees, camouflaged. “Genetically-modified bees..." Clarke said as her eyes darted around the hives.

Luna glanced at her and nodded silently.

Clarke’s eyes flicked back to Luna in surprise. "You know what that means?"

“I know many things,” she said. “People can become a part of the growth of nature, or destroy it. The ones before the bombs were not wise enough to know the difference.”

"And…you're being cryptic on purpose, so I don't have the advantage."

"One of the things I know is not to be a fool. Even with outsiders I like." Luna smiled again. "I do sometimes like to do it anyway. And now I know you have not been to Polis.”

It was only confirmation that Luna knew even more than she was letting on, even now. A lot more. “Why are you so…” Clarke wanted to know _why_ — _how_ ? The Grounders didn’t have a written language. Could she _r_ _ead_ English? “...educated? How is it possible you've even heard of genetic modification before?”

Luna smiled enigmatically. “We are not all warriors and fools, _skaifayasoa._ ”* Luna became somewhat more serious. “There are many things you do know, but there are many things you don’t. Others will seek to keep it this way. Even the Commander.”

Clarke didn’t like _any_ of the latent implications in the way she’d mentioned Lexa. “Is that supposed to be some kind of warning? "

"No. An observation.” Luna trailed away towards the hives. “ _Seiged_ a has guarded knowledge that has been passed down since before the bombs…”

Clarke eyed the city through the brush behind them. “Chesa is rich.”  She realized she had no idea if the Grounders even used some kind of monetary system. They seemed, at a glance, to be relatively egalitarian like her people had been on the Ark.

“Yes,” Luna said. “In many ways. We are the center of trade for the Coalition, and its connection to the outside world.”

 _The 'outside world'?_ Even just here in Chesa, even just having looked to Polis from a distance, their civilization was all so much more complex than Clarke had imagined while amongst the makeshift villages and war tents. She supposed she should have thought that through a little more, given the kinds of supplies even a warrior like Lincoln had on hand. It couldn’t all be scavenged from the past.

“We supply many important things aside from food,” Luna said, “Like salt and honey. And since we trade with outsiders, we can get things that one must usually go to Polis to find. But even in the Capitol, most of those things come first from us…or the northerners.”

Luna busied herself, and Clarke strayed towards her a couple paces deeper into the wood: new unfamiliar territory, always on guard. “Salt, any person can gather," Luna said, "as with all things we get from the sea. Not as well as us, of course… _"_

Clarke wasn’t sure if she was counting bees, assessing the hives—something—but Luna was multitasking, a soft, concentrated scowl on her face, body wandering, with her attention half on the hives and half on Clarke as she spoke to her.

“But the things that come from _bi_? Even Azkru with their _trinekta_ would not be so stupid as to destroy us and risk losing this resource. It is not just a matter of trade. Any wild _bi_ that still exist are delicate without the _kepas_. If the _bi_ suffered so would the food supply, and important wild medicines.” She glanced back at Clarke. “There is a lot we can learn from the _bi.”_ She concentrated on the hives, and fussed with something, craning methodically to check on them as she spoke to Clarke.

“They could force you to produce it with violence,” Clarke said.

Luna shook her head. “Only chosen _kepas_ know the _bigald_ secrets. And even they only know one essential part—it is a sacred oath they will die to keep, only passing it on to one. They do not know the identities of the other _kepas._ Any more than I do. A Seikru’s death, is to risk the death of the _bi._ Our warriors are the only exception, and they know their fate when they become such. It is well known, that if enough of the right _seikru_ were to be killed, the _bi_ would die with them. And this part of the world would suffer."

“So…your insurance policy for the fate of your people is honey?”

“ _Bi_ create many more things than honey, _Skaiheda._ Potent medicine is only one of them.”

Clarke scoured her memories, “It’s…it’s antibacterial," she mumbled in awe. “Honey and salt…antibacterial medicine and food preservation?” She was beginning to feel like the Grounders were an iceberg she’d become stranded on and barely scratched the surface of. One that would either keep her from drowning or sink her.

“Also tasty.” Luna gave her a steady matter-of-fact smile, and nodded at her. “We also supply _waks_ : candles. Seikru provides the light that allows the People to become something greater. The protections we offer the People are not ones of violence. And they, in turn, are what protect us. My people may not be warriors and conquerors, but we have played a large role in building the foundations of Polis, and the things that have made the Coalition possible.”

Luna started to amble back to where Clarke still stood. “There are things from bees much stronger than _gald_ alone. Things the bees will always renew.” She turned back to Clarke, giving her a high-jawed, questioning look. “Your medicines, they are rations from a time before bombs? When the world was different?"

Clarke said nothing. Somehow she didn’t feel patronized, but she did still feel like she’d just stepped into a classroom and hadn’t done her homework.

“The bees make _polis_ ,” Luna said.*

Clarke looked at her in question.

“Not the city, a resin _._ A very valuable one in this world—it keeps us alive, the invisible things that harm us from doing so. You’re a healer? You understand what causes sickness and decay?”

Clarke looked sagely back at her.

“There is a reason we call honey ‘gold’.” Luna walked back from under the cover of the trees towards the view at the edge of the bluff they’d ascended, and Clarke trailed behind her. “Your people's knowledge is great, Klark. And you have a responsibility to preserve it, pass it into the future. But what is rationed, will eventually run out. You would do well to remember this.” Luna looked absently to the city beneath them. “It is true for the resources, inside of us, as well.”

Clarke had lived her whole life in a world of rations. So had the generation before her and the generation before them. ‘Space-agro’ was one thing, but they'd never had to think about sustainability in a sense that reached on forever. Their necessitated descent to earth was proof enough of that.

Luna was answering questions Clarke hadn't thought to ask yet. The Mountain was a band-aid to her people: a _big_ one, brutally won, but still a band-aid. How much longer would they make it now that she’d secured it for them? Would it make the difference? “I’ve...we've really only been focused on surviving day by day. I'm not interested in building an empire. You’re talking to the wrong person.”

“You are a good ‘survivor,’ Klark. It is wise to focus on things you are not good at.”

Clarke blinked back at her comment.

“Where will you and your people be twenty years from now, if you do not?”

 _Dead_. Clarke thought. _Except Raven probably._

Clarke cleared her throat. “Your english…it’s very good.”

Luna nodded in thanks. “You will find, that the farther away you get from the Mountain, the more _trigedasleng_ becomes the language of warriors. English is the language of our ancestors.” Luna punctuated this by looking pointedly at Clarke. “ _Our_ ancestors, Klark. Not too long ago, your people and my people, were one and the same.”

Clarke wondered if this was true. If the Americans who made it to space really were anything like the ones who had scraped and survived the war on the ground. They’d been the highly educated, the wealthy, and privileged. Not all of them, but close. Clarke knew that. They were the ones rich and powerful enough to get a seat on the station, or already working there.

“Not all of us.” She hated the way the word _‘us’_ tasted in her mouth right then, like a lie. “My people came from all over the world. We only speak English because it was used as a common-tongue before the world was bombed. The people that came from _this_ land, the Americans, were only one of twelve nations that came together to make the Ark.”

A twinkle of genuine intrigue lit in Luna’s eyes. It was consoling. “How far across the world?”

“As far as you can get, before you’re closer again.”

“You see?” Luna said, the natural wonder in her eyes still gleaming. “And now they are one people. Your people. We are not so different.”

“No,” a smile pulled at Clarke’s lips, “we’re not.” It was a nice moment. A reprieve from everything that constantly weighed on top of the air.

After a pleasant silence, Luna asked, “Twelve?”

Clarke nodded. “There used to be thirteen. There was conflict and when the thirteenth was destroyed, everyone banded together for survival. We united so that wouldn’t happen again. We…thought we were the only humans left. Anywhere.”

Luna scoffed. “That must have been an interesting surprise…”

“Not exactly a friendly one…” Clarke sighed. She looked to Luna, becoming more serious again. “You said you have access to trade outside of Polis…from where?”

“The…” Luna hesitated on her words, “Ship People. They’re nomads.”

“ _Floudageda_?”

“No. The Boat People are different, they live on the other side of the bay and the land beneath their feet is still their home. I don’t know what else to call them in english— _rahtkru._  They are not like us. They live _in_ the sea.”

Clarke stared at her blankly. “What…?”

“Ships…Boats are, boats. But it is said some ships…are like cities. We live beside the water: they live upon it.”

“There are grounders that actually _live_ on the ocean _?_ Like, permanently?”

Luna nodded. “Many. They are the decedents of the people who fled from the broken world into the sea. They’ve lived that way since then. Have learned to scavenge and mend the ships that are their homes.”

This piqued Clarke's attention for various reasons. It sounded a lot like how they’d lived on the Ark.

“They do not live by our laws, or values. It is believed most thrive as bandits and cut-throats…Tales. I don’t know what your definition of _‘grounder’_ is,” Luna gave her a cautionary look, “but they are not our people. They are as different from us as your people are. In some ways more.”

“They…” Clarke’s mouth hung open a little as she tried to catch up. “Grounder _pirates_...?”

“They do not come to shore…there are legends, but if they ever do, it is rare, and with care. They are feared and taboo to outsiders, thieves and traders. But they’re connected to worlds we could not imagine. Things even I do not know. A complex people, with many secrets.”

Clarke sighed, pursing her lips and mumbled to herself, “Grounder pirates…”

“There are stories even my people have a hard time believing. Ships as large as entire nations. Technology we don’t understand. But it is their way. And they keep to themselves. Some call them _seikava_ , or _rahts_ , though I would not say that in front of them. There are other things people call them…” Luna mumbled, “which, seeing as we trade with them, I prefer not to use.”  

“Like what?”

“ _‘Flia’"_

“What does that mean?”

“The people who flee, vermin. It is not a nice word.”

“Are they hostile?”

”Only if provoked. But this is how most people are, no? Unless one were foolish enough to venture from the coast, or into the waters of the wasteland.” She looked up at Clarke. “Do not do that.”

“What happens if you do?”

“That is their territory, and they have no laws. At least that’s what we are told…As far as what may happen to you if you did? Hostile would likely be an understatement. There are stories. But it is a place few, if any in truth, have ever returned from.”

“But, they still trade with you...?”

“This is not common. Usually any kind of trade would be done by Polis merchants motivated by glory and greed. Chesa’s situation is unique, from a trade partnership my mother began cultivating many years ago. There is one _rahtkru_ clan ship in particular we have a mutual agreement with, that docks near the mouth of the bay, and leaves for long periods in the winter. We have built only enough trust to do business. _Rahtkru_ are stubborn and private people. I have yet to properly meet one of them who wasn’t their own middleman, and they keep their faces hidden…They’re always heavily armed. It is good _seikru_ produce things they find valuable. Our resources are what make us safe, not our weapons.”

“You barely have any defenses around the city. There aren’t many guards or warriors here, and I hardly even remember seeing _Seikru_ in TonDC—What’s keeping someone from sweeping in here and taking it all? Just forcing your people to do what they want?”

“We may be warm. But we are not weak, Klark.” There was a heavy subtext in the sternest in Luna’s eyes when she turned to Clarke; an acknowledgement of how much of a threat Clarke’s people could be to hers. “No Seikru has ever broken. Each person knows this is a part of protecting our Nation; on the shoulders of our ancestors, and into the future. We are raised this way, always.”

“And what happens if your enemy hurts someone you love instead of you?”

“Kidnapping is like a mortal wound—they are already dead.”

Clarke hadn’t noticed until then that she might have begun to sound suspicious, her presence dangerous. Especially with her ambiguous appearance, alone, in the city. She couldn’t help it. She wanted answers, to questions she wasn’t even sure of. Questions she couldn’t begin to find the answers to herself. She didn’t think they existed.

Luna still seemed entirely forthcoming. Her defenses were thick _because_ they had nothing to hide. The way those defenses were built, from Luna’s person, through the walls of her city, meant they didn’t have to. And regardless of whatever Luna was saying, however relaxed she was, Clarke felt like it was always somehow calculated.

“You can see why _Seigeda_ , and _Azgeda_ …do not mix.” Luna firmed her jaw and turned, looking out ahead of herself into the water instead of at Clarke.

“Tell me more about them? _Azgeda_ ,” Clarke pressed, ignoring the turn in her gut at the role she was taking on autopilot. She would never get away from her responsibility to her people. It was like an infection, a betrayal from her own selfhood that she could never expel from her blood.

Luna gave her a half nod. “What we refer to as The Ice Nation is really spread out far enough to make clans amongst itself. In order to survive, they’re lumped together in diplomacy under those most ambitious and aggressive among them. They do not have the same resources in the cold-lands that we do. But they are fierce and strong because of it.”

Luna’s voice wasn’t wholesome and diplomatic anymore when she spoke about _Azgeda_. There was fact in her words, but a generalized oppression that left her absent from them. “Their ‘Queen’ thinks we are weak and resents being subservient to Leksa. She has never fully accepted their place in the Coalition. Her power amongst _Azgeda_ has ebbed and flowed, but she is persuasive. The landing of your people has given her opportunity—while Leksa was distracted, and difficult decisions made—to re-insert herself.”

 _Great,_ Clarke thought. _So this was her fault too._

Silence drew out as they ambled down the path. They came to an outcrop where there was a break in the brush at the ledge, and the ocean shores below them were unobscured. Luna didn’t seem very inspired by the topic. With the distant look in Luna's eyes as they stayed glued to the horizon of the sea, Clarke thought she was going to speak about something else, maybe fishing, or the tides. “She…has caused unspeakable suffering.” Luna’s voice was somber. “The one they call Queen. _Islin._ ”

Clarke’s eyes flicked to Luna. There was something personal rearing in her words.

Luna’s voice deepened in a distant raspy sort of way, but remained methodical. “She took away someone I cared for deeply.” Something hung on the end of Luna’s words. “Her name was Kostia."

Clarke jerked to attention, her eyes penetrating Luna’s in surprise.

Luna had an odd look on her face. She was _testing_ Clarke, evaluating her, and Clarke knew she should have covered up her reaction better.

Luna’s eyes weren't threatening though; they were intense. Clarke could see Luna watching her, prodding her, silently evaluating her responses. Clarke could practically hear the confirmation she’d just given, rolling off Luna’s lips.

Clarke’s heart hammered away in her chest despite herself, and her ability to remain stoic. "What was she to you?”

“Kostia was like my sister.”

“She...was _seikru_?”

Luna finally said it out loud, firm and unapologetic: “She did tell you.”

Clarke’s eyes darted away. She swallowed. “She did.” Giving away anything about her recent history with Lexa aside, talking about this was unsettling. Despite all of her seething anger, Clarke’s heart still went out to Lexa on some level in this context, in some compartmentalized and primal, protective way.

“She trusted you.” Luna’s words were a simple statement.

Clarke didn’t say anything, or even look at Luna. _Not as much as she'd needed her to._

“Kos, was as much a child of Chesa as she was of the woods…more. And her heart resided in Polis.”

"And you…you were close?" Clarke chastised herself for fishing, but the words just came out of her mouth, even though her throat was fighting it.

"My mother, Aura, was a warrior, and leader. When my father was killed she stopped fighting and came back here to guide the city. She gave sanctuary to many _Trikru_ whose lives were also permanently scarred. Kostia’s parents were killed in the same battle when she was still young. My mother brought her back here until she was old enough to apprentice in Polis."

"Did she know Lincoln?" Clarke asked, surprised at both the words pushing out of her mouth, and the concept.

"Only in passing…Kos and I used to visit the city together when we were young with my mother.” The ever faint glimmer of a melancholy smile passed over Luna’s face. “She was very clever…she is the one who taught me English.”

There was a long silence, as Luna moved further away to stare out over the ocean. Clarke was anticipating an awkward shift; she certainly had nothing to say in response to that. But before it came, Luna's demeanor changed in a way Clarke had not seen before, or been expecting. Despite her amiable demeanor, it was plain enough that Luna was a strong person—but a distant melancholy consumed her that ached of despair and trauma’s of the past.

"I saw what was done to her.” Her voice was soft and serious, rolling in on itself and haunted by evil. "Before she died. I was brought to look upon her as a warning…”

Clarke wasn’t prepared for the weight—the horrible _weight_ —and the level of raw emotion.

“What was left of her.” There was a look in Luna's eyes that was severe, and said everything she physically could not. Her voice was so thick it was almost inaudible when she spoke again. "I begged her, to let go, and die. She was too proud. Even with—” she couldn't finish whatever it was she'd been about to say.

The words were lodged in Luna’s memories.

Clarke had a feeling, by the look in her eyes, that they should stay there.

“Kostia…is what happens when an impenetrable Sea Person meets an unyielding Ice Person.”

Clarke faltered. She hadn’t thought about it that way before: that Costia really _did_ have information on Lexa. That wasn’t the way Lexa had made it sound. But why wouldn’t she? If Costia had been trained this way from youth to withstand torture, then the things they must have done to her…

Luna looked up pointedly at Clarke. “That was not about survival. It was not about strength. What was done there…was…” Luna cleared her throat. She clenched her teeth, her eyes glued back out into the ocean. "When Leksa saw her head…” she paused again.

Clarke couldn’t stop this conversation. It was already happening.

“Something broke inside of her. She lost herself...lost reason…She demanded to be taken to Kostia's body. I _begged_ her not to. But she was already beyond all sense.” Luna was quiet for a very long time. The strain in her voice became even worse than Clarke had expected. "When she did see it...what was left of it, that was no longer Kostia,” her voice cracked as she went back there, “what was…what was done to her, Leksa..." Luna licked her lips, stalling upon her memories for words.

Clarke could see her breathing over images in her mind, and deciding not to speak them out loud.

"She lost her mind.” There was a weight in Luna’s voice that spoke of caring for Lexa. But also as if she were talking of the deceased. “It took Anya, myself, and three other warriors to get her away. She almost killed one of them. If Gustus hadn’t been there to…I—I don't think she remembers...I thought, she was broken. I did not think she would survive it.”

There was a growing ball of brillo lodged in Clarke’s throat that she was desperately trying to suppress.

Luna’s jaw firmed a little now. “For the first two days she would not eat, speak, or move, she would not even sleep; not even shut her eyes.” Luna paused again. "On the third day. I watched her stand up. Walk past the trophy of Kostia’s body—the pieces hanging from the trees—into that same compound. Without a quiver in her voice or step. And broker a treaty with the woman who had done it. That, was when we knew. That she was truly the Commander of our people: Leksa died and the spirit of the Commander took her place.”

Clarke stared with wide attentive eyes, glued to Luna's words. She suppressed the quiver of emotion that had snuck into her own throat and had to whisper so it wouldn’t show. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I can see how much you are like the Commander.” Luna looked back up at Clarke. “And one day, you both must come to realize that the girl you used to be, and the Commander you are now, are one and the same person. That girl, is not gone: it is on her foundation that your armor is hung.”

Clarke had to tear her eyes away from Luna, her heart hammering at her chest and vision keen like she was about to head into battle. She took a steadying breath. “And why are you showing me all of this?" Clarke gestured behind them, back at the beehives.

"Because…you have a strong heart."

Clarke wasn't so sure about that anymore.

"True peace comes from understanding. Someday, you might be faced with a choice to become our enemy. And if you are? I hope to fill your head with thoughts of honeybees and silly children."

Clarke tried not to freeze up again. Her heart churned inside of her. It plummeted to her feet and didn’t want to come back up. "That's..." she choked out. She sealed her eyes shut, trying to ward off the vertigo; the nausea, and souls haunting her, clinging to her, echoing through her mind. She tried to press out the images. “Excuse me…” Clarke’s tone shifted and a steel returned to it. “If you don’t mind, I think I've had enough of that for today.” She turned back down the trail that lead into the city and disappeared.

Leaving Luna looking after her with pursed lips.

  
-x-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CONTENT WARNING: Traumatic recall of Costia’s torture/execution, though not necessarily explicit in itself, there is heavy implication and heavy angst.**   
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>    
>  **TRIGEDASLENG TRANSLATIONS:**  
> 
> 
> CANON:
> 
>  _ **kepa** \- keeper _ (here, seikru beekeeper)  
>   
>  HEADCANONED:
> 
>  _ ***skaifayasoa** \- shooting star_ (from _skaifaya_ ) (+ headcanon, _soa: bird; soarer_ ), Luna’s using this as a pet name for Clarke.  
>  _ **Rahtkru** \- post-apocalyptic pirates, sea nomads on the east coast._  
>  _ **Flia** \- flee-er/coward; also probably ‘flee’ from the parasites;_ colloquial slang used to disrespectfully refer to the Pirate Nation.  
>  _ **Rahts** \- colloquial grounder term for the sea-nomads;_ from both ‘rat’ and ‘pi-rate’; slightly disrespectful but not nearly in the same way as ‘flia’  
>  _ **bigald** \- honey_  
>  _ **trinekta** \- maple syrup_  
>  _ **polis** \- propolis_ (an antibacterial resin, or glue, produced by bees), Seikru’s polis comes from genetically modified bees and therefore has stronger properties  
>  _ **waks** \- bee’s wax_


	6. ' WAYS TO BREAK '

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Have a feeling you guys are gonna like this chapter. ;)**
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> **Big extra sparkly special thanks to[Nookiepoweredamazon](http://nookiepoweredamazon.tumblr.com) for being so amazing and supportive, as always, beyond the call of duty <3 :)**
> 
> **Optional soundtrack for this chapter:**  
>  _Johann Johansson - Morning Workout_  
>  _Brambles - Unsayable_  
>  _Stars of the Lid - Dungtitled (In A Major)_  
>  _Down Like Silver - Wolves_  
>  _Al Gomer Khan - Take this Ruby_

* * *

 —-x-—

  

It was less than an hour before Luna reappeared at the door to Clarke’s bungalow, her tone modest but official. “I said something that offended you."

"No. It wasn't you." Clarke had left Luna in a rather unceremonious manner. The truth was, she’d had enough. Her mind and heart were exhausted, and she’d practically fled back to her cabin. "Can you just..."

“I’ll leave you be." Luna turned to exit the door, her hand already on it.

 _God, would this woman stop being so hard to keep out?_ Clarke didn't want friends right now. She certainly didn't want another person to care about. And mourn if they got cut down. “Luna—"

Luna turned back to face her.

"I'm just…I’m just tired." Her _heart_ was tired. Was so fucking tired, and battered and broken, and _wasted_. But pretending it was her body would have to do.

Luna nodded and left the room. She disappeared past the curtain over the door with a swish.

Clarke wasn't sure how long would be appropriate to wait after she left, until she could let the sobs lodged inside of her break apart without being heard. But when she collapsed on the bed and tried, it wouldn’t come. She had no idea what she was doing here. And there was only emptiness.

 

* * *

 

Clarke was left alone for at least a couple hours before she was ushered to dinner, Luna nowhere to be found. Clarke didn’t ask. She was content with avoiding things for as long as she could draw out while she was here.

Eating with the Grounders seemed to be a much more casual and intimate affair here than it ever was in the war councils. People didn’t always stay seated, children were allowed to be children, there was laughter, and it would have been hard for an outsider to pick out Luna as the leader when she _was_ there. The Seikru seemed to have a penchant for being out in the raw air under the stars. Clarke guessed they were milking it for all that it was worth while they still could, as if purposefully in denial about the cold autumn air threatening to press in all around them and nip at their fingers.

 

Several hours after the meal—when the fires had begun to dim, the sky darken, and the city had calmed to a gentle hum—Clarke found herself alone with Luna, once again, in her guest bungalow.

She had been given something sweet and alcoholic at the meal and it still buzzed inside of her just enough to hush the ever present anxiety in her bones and keep it at bay. She’d actually been grateful when Luna showed up at her door with treats and honeyed tea: she seemed intent on distracting Clarke with living.

It was a little weird staying here with no actual motive. Clarke got the impression Luna was still trying to weed that true motive out of her, giving all of the opportunities and comfortable silences for Clarke to bring up her own interests. She was dreading the point that would come if she kept silent too long. She didn’t have decent answers or excuses yet.

 

“I would like to ally with you, Klark,” Luna said, a casual warmth having already started to gather between them in the room. “It would have great implications. But you must understand that an alliance with me is an alliance with Leksa.”

“And if she loses the Coalition to _Azgeda_?”

Luna stopped shuffling the pillows on the floor where they sat, and her eyes popped up to Clarke. “That cannot happen.”

“Why?”

Luna looked down at the candle on the table and was silent for a moment. “There would be grave consequences. It would not be a good world.” Luna looked up at her. “Beyond that, Leksa would die in unspeakable agony. And perhaps, so would I.”

Clarke could tell Luna was watching her carefully again when she said it, which is why she didn’t look Luna in the eye. She swallowed, and suppressed the automatic urge that rose up inside of her to offer them sanctuary, should what Luna was saying occur. She just nodded.

Luna leaned back into the pillows, finally, presumably, comfortable. “Kostia was much more like me than she was like you…” The trauma had gone from Luna’s countenance, having left earlier on the tails of her words as she’d recounted the story. She looked back up to Clarke beside her, much more at ease now.

Clarke slowly turned her head and narrowed her eyes at Luna.

"You look at me as though I think that's a good thing? She was strong. But she was an idealist. Not a transformer. In order to truly create anything, you must destroy. "

The look Clarke was hounding Luna with changed. She wasn't quite sure what Luna was saying about her.

“There are people who understand one, or the other. And then there are people like you and Leksa, who understand—who are willing to _do_ both. Not all of us have that ability, it is a spiritual strength.”

"You're assuming an awful lot about someone you've only known for a day."

“I have heard and seen enough. Am I wrong, Klark? Would you even be the Commander of the Sky People if I were? I know you were not their Commander while you were in the Sky.”

Clarke squinted her eyes at Luna again.

“You _became_ their Commander when you came to ground and things changed, did you not? Because you did what needed doing?”

Clarke nodded warily at Luna, her eyes dark.

“I may not have been involved, but I am informed—When your people faced death, _you_ are the one who came into the Commander’s tent and negotiated, yes? You are the one who took both risk and control. And I suspect the reason your people look to you, is because you have not only done that at war?”

The tip of Luna’s finger traced around the smooth edge on the rim of her cup, eyes flickering up at Clarke in the candlelight. “These things—what we are _driven_ to do—are chosen by our spirit. We have no control over it. Only the choice to embrace it, or resist. If we try too hard to deny it, our spirit will only find a way to leave us in this life. To try again, to become someone who _won’t_ fight what we are really here to be.”

Clarke processed this. She didn’t _dis_ agree, but she wasn’t used to thinking about things that way. “ _‘_ Destiny’…?” she asked. “What about Costia, and what happened to her?”

“That was different.”

Clarke could tell by the hard tone that gripped Luna’s voice that she didn’t have an answer for what Costia went through. There was no deeper, lofty explanation, or spiritual truth. A chink in Luna’s armor.

“There are different ways to die,” Luna said darkly over her cup as she blew on it, not looking at Clarke. “Resisting your destiny is only one of them.” She took a tentative sip and a long breath. The light worked back into her eyes before she looked up at Clarke again. “There is a future—past tomorrow, and far past whatever battle you might find yourself in—whether you would like to look at it or not. You must decide what kind of person that you are going to be."

Clarke didn’t respond to Luna right away. When she did there was a shadow cast over her face that put the previous flicker of darkness in Luna’s to shame. “I think it's a little too late for that."

Her gaze became grim, staring into one of the lanterns on the table: Luna let it be. “I never wanted to be in charge—of all of those people." Clarke confessed quietly.

"Good,” Luna said. “The only people who _want_ to be the leader are either insane or obsessed with themselves.”*

“Which one is Lexa?" Clarke mumbled bitterly.

Luna’s head turned towards her. "What makes you think Leksa has ever wanted to be the Commander?"

Clarke paused at that.

“There’s a difference between committing to a role, and desiring it. Leksa has been overly responsible and _fierce_ since she was a child. With fate, the weight fell on her naturally. That does not mean she wouldn’t rather be picking wild flowers in the sun, than holding the world together and deciding who dies each day.”

“I wasn’t aware Lexa was invited to this tea party.”

Luna paused and raised a curious brow at her.

“Can you _stop_ talking about her.” As far as Clarke was concerned, Lexa was her enemy now. Lexa _chose_ that. She knew what Luna was doing, the way she spoke about her, and she was somewhat insulted at how good she was at it. Probably because she wasn’t just being manipulative, but actually meant the sentiments behind her agenda. Her weapon was pathos.

Luna only nodded, her eyebrow still quirked upwards, and changed the subject. She cleared her throat. “Are you warm enough?” She glanced at the glowing rocks in the hearth at the corner of the room.

Clarke nodded, and tried not to fidget. The silence faded into her mind as she brooded past the table.

“Some Maunon rebelled…” Clarke said quietly. “They tried to help, both of our people, they—“ she hedged over her tenses. _They weren’t all bad._ “They didn’t have a choice what they were born into.”

“That is always true. And it is important to remember. But their culture was one of terror. People on both sides become victims of such things, that is all the more reason they must be stopped.”

 _At what cost?_ It didn’t make killing them all any easier.

“Azgeda… _”_ Luna added under her breath, “are different, but similar in that way.”

Clarke was silent for a long, dead moment again, staring into her tea.

Luna shifted, her voice softer. “Maybe I am wrong,” she said, “or too much of an idealist. But I don’t believe there is such thing as a bad soul. Only people who have been cut off from their own. There are some, like Islin, for whom it is too late… For whom death will do a favor. You are a far cry from that state, Klark.”

"You…don't know what kinds of things I've done."

"Did they have reasons?” Luna asked slowly. “Did you have to do these things to take care of your people? To survive?”

Clarke gave her a slow lackluster nod. That's what The Mountain People had been doing. It was still wrong.

“Did you enjoy them?”

Clarke shook her head, trying to keep the emotion on her face hidden and not to choke up.

“Then right now, it is not the things you've done that matter. It's the fact you _care_ about having done them.”

Finn had cared about what he’d done. He’d been trying to push through it at the time, not to care, but it had broken him— _he’d_ still needed to be executed. What if she was cut off _because_ she cared? We could never take back our actions. What if it was too much?

“It means in the future,” Luna said, “you will be motivated to prevent the _need_ for the same actions and decisions from ever coming again, before they’ve even been set in motion…”

Clarke barely heard what she’d just said, and it didn’t register. “There’s such a thing as crossing a line,” Clarke said. “There’s such a thing as going too far, in a way you can’t come back from. Caring about what you did doesn’t matter if that’s the case. It only makes it worse ”

“And you think you have?”

Clarke eyes darted pointedly away, unable to look at Luna. Her throat felt heavy with a kind of nausea that strangled it and wouldn’t leave her.

Luna leaned forward. “Would you make these same choices again, if you could change them?”

Clarke nodded without thought. “They’re my people. My family. My friends. I’ll do whatever I have to protect them.” It was true. Even now. After everything. It was true. She hated it. She just wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there, to collapse and never come out. But she was tied to her people; she didn’t have a choice. Letting them go wasn’t who she was. It would burn her up and eat her alive to defy that, just like Luna had said. _Even if there was nothing left of her in the end._ Given the position she’d been in, she would always pull that lever.

“And that is why you are _Klakeda_.” Luna sat back and gave Clarke a long appraising look, twirling one of her locks as she did. “Klark. You are a leader. What you have done is not what’s truly important now. The fact it still bothers you, that you can _feel_ it, is. It means you're still here. That may not be pleasant. But that is exactly what means you _should_ be leader. It is when you stop caring that you need to worry. And it is when you start enjoying it that you begin to be truly broken.”

“ _Feeling_ it? I thought that was weakness."

"No.” Luna shook her head. “Our heart is what connects us to our soul. It is strength."

"Doesn't seem that way on the battlefield."

"Our mind is what connects us to the earth. That is _another kind_ of strength,” Luna whispered. She leaned closer to Clarke, her gaze intense, the air becoming thicker. “And our bodies?” Luna slid her hand over the top of Clarks’s on the table—which was unexpected—it shot Clarke to attention. Aside from a skirmish or two she hadn’t touched another human being in weeks. “Our bodies take care of both. That is why we must take care of them.” Luna’s hand slid back off of hers and went back to her tea.

Clarke couldn't understand Luna's reasoning inside of everything that had been hammered into her since she'd landed on the ground. "That doesn't sound like what the majority of your people believe…”

“You mean the Coalition, not my clan, I hope.” Luna cradled her cup and sipped at it. “Our world is out of balance. It is what happens when there is too much fear. And fear feeds itself quickly."

_Why was Luna so close to her?_

“Tell me, Klark…” her eyes sparkled a little like they had when Clarke had spoken about the other side of the world, “does _Skaikru_ still have music from before the bombs?”

“Uh…” Clarke blinked at the shift of energy that accompanied this. “Yeah…yeah we have a lot.”

With no exchange of words, Luna gave Clarke a steady pleasant look that slowly crept into her lips. It threatened to creep into Clarke’s, though she wasn’t even sure why. The look was accompanied on Luna’s end by another drawn out swallow of her drink that pulled the last tendrils of change through the conversation. “Perhaps you will enjoy a swim in the ocean." She eyed Clarke over the earthen mug.

At the reference, something childlike and indulgent  involuntarily lit up inside of Clarke from behind the worn layers inside of her. She’d cried when she’d seen the ocean. The sound of the waves in the distance felt like a heartbeat of the Earth that had been missing in space, replaced by machine hum. “Is it safe?”

Luna nodded. “In the right places.”

"I can't swim. Only enough water to survive, in space."

"Do not tell people that,” Luna said with a chuckle, over another sip. Her voice eased more. “You must relax and pretend you are a fish that belongs in the water. Your body will know what to do. But it’s cold now.” Her eyes stuck on Clarke in a more intimate way. “One must find a reprieve of warmth.”

Clarke swallowed.

Luna’s inquiring eyes were the sage-grey color of the autumn sky, infused with a ring the same russet color of the tangy tea she was feeding Clarke. Her lips looked like they would feel the same way the tea did sliding down her throat: warm and consoling.

Luna had obviously said she had a husband, but Clarke got the impression it wasn’t necessarily the default for grounders to restrain themselves to the concept of sexual monogamy. Maybe their lives were too short to bother, or place unnecessary limits on small un-purchased pleasures.

It certainly seemed that way. At least, by the unrelenting look Luna was giving her. A small smile flickered across the corner of Clarke’s lips. “Um..."

“Do I make you uncomfortable, Klark?”

“Sorry…cultural differences and everything…Are you,” Clarke narrowed her eyes, wondering if it would translate, “are you coming onto me…?”

Luna’s lips slowly curled upwards into a smile. "You would know,” she said, her eyes drilling into Clarke’s.

Clarke arched a brow at her and tried to remember to keep her mouth closed and look like a badass. That wasn’t an answer.

Luna’s countenance shifted back to something more casual, and she backed off a little. "Not that you aren't more than worthy of attention, Klark…” A light, complimentary smile graced Luna’s lips at the idea that she wasn’t; the way her eyes darted over Clarke shot a stab of sexual tension through the air. “But I am wise enough not to slight the Commander. I value my hands."

Clarke's brow furrowed and she got pissed. "Lexa does _not_ own me: not even CLOSE.”

Luna gave her another one of the subtle, smug smiles, which Clarke was quickly learning were her signature. "Yes,” she nodded. “But I have known Leksa since we were small. She is a friend. I have not seen her since the spring, and I have no intention of possibly scuffing her heart.”

Could Lexa even _have_ friends?

Luna’s eyes flickered away, though still present, on the other side of the shadow that filtered subtly over them, they were more firm and serious. “It has been through enough."

Clarke really wasn't sure what to say to that.

“Despite your issues with the Commander, I hope that sentiment does not offend you.” Luna gave her a consolatory nod, then took a calculated sip. Her eyes flicked over Clarke behind the curve of her cup, then her hand lingered with it between them in the air in a sort of half-toast. By the time it was lowered back to the table her gaze was firmly fixed on Clarke’s again, though not boring though her quite as intensely. “My apologies, _Skaiheda_. I have been told I can be disarming.”

“That's not necessarily a bad thing.” Clarke said, still staring back at her.

“I don't wish to make you uncomfortable.”

“You're not.” She was tempted to tell Luna that what Lexa didn't know wouldn't hurt her. Actually, the idea of potentially hurting Lexa that way had a _strong_ appeal to it right now.

But the way Luna had spoken, Clarke had too much respect for the sentiment of loyalty in Luna's friendship in itself. It made her think of Wells again and, though frustrating, it seemed he'd become the conscience of caution that had worn through to the other-side in herself, holding her back both literally and figuratively from dangerous precipices.

The light flicked across Luna’s face from the lantern on the table. She smiled and nodded again, and the intensity of her focus shifted off of Clarke.

The rejection weighed in Clarke in an annoying, melancholy way. She wasn’t really content accepting it. She was tired of hearing about Lexa. She wanted to disappear. In something. Anything. Anything but violence.

Clarke put her tea down and shifted onto her feet, she could feel Luna’s eyes on her as she crossed to one of the windows and directed her attention to the world outside. There may have been darkness in the sky above their heads, but the Sea People tended to keep their pathways and inhabited spaces brightly lit with candles and torches. The lax attitude probably had something to do with the relative abundance of wax, and fat from the sea animals at their disposal.

Clarke dipped her finger into the searing wax of the candle on the windowsill. She watched half-heartedly as it burned the tip of her finger while it dried.

“Klark…?” Luna whispered. She disregarded her tea as well and shifted as if to get up, dialogue on the tip of her tongue.

But a loud _rap_ shot Luna’s attention to the entryway.  

It was followed by a gruff voice, loud, though muffled through the door. “Yu ste gaf in snap, ‘eda.” _You’re needed right away, commander._

Clarke scowled, as Luna leapt to her feet, and then the door, cracking it open enough for the guard standing at the threshold. The _seikru_ guard's presence alone seemed to be a signal that something was wrong. “Chit laik?” _What is it?_ she asked, breathy and to the point. Luna leaned forward past the curtain as the guard mumbled something in her ear that Clarke couldn’t hear at all.

Luna’s expression changed and her mouth hung slightly. “ _Jokk_ ,” _Fuckk,_ she hissed, still looking like she was trying to process whatever he had just told her. She quickly nodded and muttered something back at him in _seisleng_. A commanding tone slipped into her voice, which she sought to temper: something that seemed so backwards from all of the other grounders.

The guard disappeared, and Clarke braced herself for more news of death, of destruction. Of danger.

Luna turned back to Clarke, her demeanor different. "It seems, Klark…there is a presence in Chesa I must attend to immediately."

Clarke stepped forward with a readied scowl. They looked at each other silently for a moment. Luna’s face was uncharacteristically colorless, and serious.

“Should I be looking for a dagger?” Clarke asked.

“Should you?” Luna asked. “The Commander is here.”

  

Clarke gaped at Luna. " _What_?"

 _Lexa_?

Lexa was _here_?

“ _What…”_ Clarke’s incredulity was quickly being replaced by panic and anger, “HOW—” Her eyes darted around the room. She fidgeted behind an invisible line like a cornered animal.

“ _Now_ ,” Luna said urgently as she scrambled to close the curtains, "she is here _now."_ Her attitude was completely changed, it was no longer serene, but efficient. "I must go to greet her—” she turned to Clarke, “ _stay_ in here."

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Heda_ ,” Clarke heard Luna greet from outside.

_Oh God._

Lexa was _right_ there—in the road outside the hut.

Clarke went to the heavy leather curtains and slipped her eyes past them, keeping hidden behind the shadows— _Lexa_ —smudged war paint, stoney face, retinue and everything. She couldn't have been more that ten yards away and gaining as she neared Luna. Their voices were muffled by the distance but Clarke could still hear them.

" _Sei’eda,_ ” Lexa greeted in response.

Clarke could make out the slight nod of Lexa’s head past the torches and people between them obscuring her vision.

Luna approached Lexa a little too quickly, halting her procession. It occurred to Clarke that the bungalow she was staying in might actually be the Commander's usual guest quarters.

Lexa handed the horse trailing beside her off to one of the guards, and it was quickly attended to. The handful of people with her fell back. Lexa gave a jerk of her arm and they started to dissipate, leaving her alone with Luna.

“Your presence is a surprise…” Luna said in english, a press in her voice.

"There is war to talk of." Lexa’s voice was stern and anxious, but less-so than Clarke remembered it had been during battle.

It didn't seem to phase Luna. “There is always war to talk of.” Luna’s spine was straight, her gaze more formal than it had been when she met Clarke, but her eyes, still, somehow twinkled in Lexa's presence. “Five moons, two and a half wars…And I do not get a hug…?”

Lexa clenched her jaw, giving her a firm look that Luna must have been holding in stride. After a moment Lexa lowered her voice, gritty, " _Later._ "

Clarke narrowed her eyes.

Luna must have said something with only her expression, because Lexa starred off ahead and sighed, before Luna _did_ moved forward and loosely embraced her. Clarke was half expecting Luna’s throat to get torn out. Instead, Lexa stared sullenly for a moment, then rested her chin on Luna’s shoulder. Her brow softened into the distance in a way no one was supposed to see.

She looked tired.

By the time Lexa pulled away, she was already on point again, the mask slipping seamlessly back over her face.

“You have traveled far," Luna said, "I will have food brought to—”

"No," Lexa said sharply. “After we speak." Something stern in _trigedasleng_ followed.

“Hed—” Luna tried amidst the words.

"We have problems. Polis is no longer safe. Where is Ahmia—"

“Heda…" Luna tried again, “there is something else—"

The door to the bungalow slammed— _hard_ , and deliberately—behind Clarke. All eyes snapped in her direction.

Lexa froze, her gaze dark and wide.

Clarke took a couple steps into the light and lofted her chin, her jaw cut. Her eyes smoldered and spit steadily at Lexa with fire and contempt.

The Commander stared at her, her voice was a crack of air, “Klark…?”

 

-x-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thanks for making it this far for Heda, guys. Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Strap in for the heartseyes and angst.**  
>  _________  
>  _*Yah, Luna’s consciously quoting Eisenhower._


	7. ' SCATTER ME '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thanks for being patient for Lexa. If I’ve done my job, I believe the payoff from the build up will be worth it. Optional soundtrack for this chapter is _Alice Enters by Olafur Arnalds_**
> 
> **NOTE: If you are still experiencing some measure of traumatic response to Lexa’s "canon" "death" you might want to read the Content Warning for spoilers of possible triggers in the endnote. Alternatively, don't worry too much, I have zero intentions of dropping the ball ;) **

* * *

  **—-x-—**

 

Clarke didn't say anything. She stared at Lexa with more vitriol than she had anyone in a long time.

Lexa’s mouth had fallen open, and it stayed that way, as her eyes darted over Clarke. She blinked hard several times, as if to make sure Clarke was not a hallucination. She'd taken all but a pace towards Clarke, as if to see her better, but stopped herself. Her voice rasped, " _Klark_ …?” like it was being crushed to death; tiny and weak when it emerged, and attempting to correct itself. The mask was torn from her face. Her eyes were soft and glistening, more emotion attempting to flood their stoney gates than there should have been as she gaped and blinked hard again.

And Clarke was a little satisfied.

But her expression never ceased to be sullen and unforgiving. Right now, she was _more powerful than Lexa_. And she knew it: and she was milking it.

"How-?” On top of everything, Lexa seemed genuinely dumbfounded and blindsided as to how Clarke was there.

It was almost as if she didn't believe her own mind anymore. And Clarke nearly allowed herself to wonder how long it had been since Lexa had slept. Only because she had really, _really_ been there, before.

Lexa composed herself as best she could, her eyes still gleaming and soft under a furrowed brow. When she spoke again it was half choked and half steady, a failed attempt at pragmatism; it cracked into her eyes in a way it _definitely_ shouldn't have.

And the spite in Clarke very much did feel she'd just won something.

"There is a rumor…” Lexa said, “that you were dead." She swallowed something after she said it, wavering as she attempted to keep her head high. Clarke could see many layers of pain rooted inside of Lexa, ones that had deep implications.

And she didn't care.

Clarke was unforgiving; her expression never fleeting, and her spiteful, penetrating eyes never leaving Lexa’s. "Funny thing about _rumors_." It was a silent stab at the emotions in Lexa’s gaze.

Clarke could tell from the corner of her vision that Luna’s attention was darting between them, watching them warily. Lexa raised her chin and swallowed something inside of herself again.

Clarke noticed for the first time that Lexa’s arm was in a sling and she was wounded. She was angry that it brought the back of her mind to a moment that almost felt like a first date. She wanted to slice the word in two and _choke_ Lexa with it.

“Leave us,” Lexa barely threw over the shoulder to Luna, who started to move away.

“ _No._ ” Clarke's voice cracked through the air like a whip.

Luna froze.

Clarke wasn't entirely conscious of the implications in the way she'd just contradicted the ‘ _Heda’s’_ command to her own general, but she certainly felt it. "Anything you have to say to me can be said _now_.”

Lexa glanced at Luna and faltered. For a moment she didn't say anything. “Kl-Klark…”

Clarke knew Lexa hated herself for actually stuttering. She was struggling to screw her head back on.

“I was just _leaving_ ,” Clarke said.

 

* * *

 

"Klark,” Lexa fumbled through the bungalow door after her, "wait."

Clarke spun around, her eyes blazing at the address— _WHAT?_ —they screamed back at Lexa with a fury, as she pushed forward into Lexa’s face.

Lexa took a step back at her advance. She tried to keep her head high and level as she leaned away from Clarke so she wouldn't have to take another.

Luna appeared through the door behind her, the telltale look of someone dutifully ready to try to defuse a hurricane with her bare hands.

“Please,” Lexa said.

She was still trying to be pragmatic and poised and—Clarke didn't care if Luna was still present—it made her even angrier. Clarke clamped her teeth together, clenching her fists as hard as she could, and stared Lexa down as if she could physically knock her over with her eyes. Then turned around and started gathering herself together in a rush to leave, blatantly ignoring the Commander. The first thing she did was pull her gun out from where she'd had it hidden, and holster it.

"Klark.”

She refused to give Lexa even the courtesy of looking at her.

“I know you're angry with me, but you need to listen. It isn’t—”

The only effect Lexa's words had, was to visibly throw more emphasis and vitriol behind Clarke’s actions; to increase the tremble from tension in her hands and her violence towards objects. But once she had herself together, she straightened to leave, facing Lexa.

"You can't go out there,” Lexa said pointedly.

 _"Find_ out what happens if you try to stop me."

"Klark, please. It isn't safe—”

" _Safe?"_ Clarke blinked at her, her voice putrid and dripping. The more Lexa spoke the angrier she got— _’SAFE’..?_ — _since when did Lexa have any right to care if she was safe?_ _"_ GET out of my way."

"A war has broken out at Polis." Luna's head whipped to Lexa but they both ignored her. "The city is surrounded and will soon be under siege, you cannot attempt to pass through there. You will be—”

_"Shutup."_

She did.

Clarke attempted to pass.

But Lexa impulsively jumped in front of her path, blocking her.

She seriously wondered if Lexa had a death wish. _"Get out_ of _my way."_

"Klark, _please._ You must use your head..."

She couldn't believe Lexa had the audacity to say that to her right now. "Get the _fuck_ out of my way."

Lexa stared back at her, and wet her lips with a swallow. She didn't move.

Clarke un-holstered her gun. She let it hang by her side in her grip. "Get _out_ , of my way, Lexa."

The name was painful to say.  

There was a fire rolling inside of her at Lexa’s proximity. Her head threatened to spin off of her body, and leave it to blindly claw the world before her to death.

Lexa's eyes flashed down to the gun, and back up to Clarke's. She hadn't been expecting it. Despite everything, Clarke could swear Lexa actually seemed hurt by the silent threat; by the magnitude of the steel in Clarke's voice and eyes.

_Who cares._

Clarke took a challenging step forward. She cocked the gun without looking at it, her eyes boring through Lexa's.

Luna tried to step between them—protecting her Commander—unnerved herself, but Lexa practically pushed her out of the way.

Somewhere in Clarke’s mind, she was surprised she didn't already have a sword at her throat and guards barreling through the door on top of her. _“_ If you have _one common shred of dignity left_ ,” Clarke said, her posture threatening as fuck, as she hovered towards Lexa, “you will turn around and leave me. Or I will shoot you in the fucking chest." Her eyes danced threateningly over Lexa’s. _Not that it would matter, seeing as Lexa didn’t have a heart._

Lexa's eyes and throat both wavered.

Clarke was tempted to step right up into her face but didn’t want to get close enough to be disarmed. Her eyes flickered at her like fire. She almost didn't recognize her own voice underneath the septic, noxious hiss. "You wanna _try_ me?"

Lexa wet her lips nervously, and her wide eyes finally faltered.

Clarke raised the gun and pointed it squarely at her chest.  

“ _Klark?_ ” Luna  said on impulse, Lexa only threw out a hand to still her, eyes never leaving Clarke’s.  

“ _Move._ ” Clarke said. A moment passed as they stared at each other, a silent challenge on the intent of her follow-through.

Lexa stepped back from Clarke. She lingered with another look at her, more tragic than Clarke expected, even now. Then finally turned away and swept out the door.

 

* * *

 

Clarke took the deepest breath she could gather. She took even longer to exhale, her shoulders falling along with her lungs.

Her eyes were still blazing as she stared through the door, practically daring Lexa to reappear. Luna was frozen in the corner of the room, eyes peeled and staring at Clarke. She was a little pale, considering her usual confident exterior.

Clarke suspected she was internally deploring not having taken away her gun.

"Klark," Luna said. “Please...do not leave tonight? It is too dangerous, in the dark, alone.”

Luna was being diplomatic, but Clarke could tell she was genuinely shaken. Whether it was because she wanted her to stick around to sell her to the Ice Nation, or actually for her well being, Clarke wasn't sure. Her instincts, and some modicum of logic, said it wasn’t the former, but she knew better by now than to blindly trust that.

“At least wait until dawn? I will arrange for a boat to take you across the bay past the _rahtkru_ ship…it will keep you away from the uprising, and shorten your journey back to your people by days.”

Clarke hadn't been thinking past the next five hours. Her options were basically now to go back to Mount Weather, freeze to death, or find that cave to crawl into for the rest of the winter.

_Fuck that. She was here first._

"Fine." If Lexa didn't outright leave, Clarke would have some choice words with her tomorrow. She wasn't ready to deal with it but she had to do something. "Thank you.”

Luna didn't move. She was eyeing Clarke with a concerned, swallowed look.

"You really think I'm gonna shoot your Commander in her sleep in the middle of a city full of her people?" Clarke asked. “I’m not that stupid."

_Guns were loud._

Luna nodded. She did look a little relieved. Clarke suspected Lexa would still be heavily guarded tonight.

It was already out of the ordinary that Clarke hadn't been taken out and detained, or at the very _least_ had her weapon taken away for threatening the Commander the way she just had. Lexa hadn't seemed concerned for her own well being, but Clarke had still caught the falter of uncertainty in her eyes. Clarke took another deep breath. She'd had no intention of dragging this shit into Luna’s city. No matter how far at the end of her rope she was, no matter how destitute of actual command, she couldn't afford to be flying off the handle right now. Not for her people back at Camp Jaha.

She couldn't believe Luna was still standing there, looking at her with a spooked kind of concern—like she was still her guest—instead of with betrayal and hatred; ordering a heap of guards to wrestle her to the floor and demanding her head.

Indra would have already had her sword halfway through her neck. Clarke cleared her throat, trying to be cold and poised instead of weakened by the force of emotion. "I wasn't expecting her here."

"Neither was I." Luna nodded. "The Commander is in the midst of defending the Capitol against rebellion. It may be urgent. I must speak with her."

"Of course."

"If you need anything…Ayre and Nanti are on patrol tonight."

_In other words, the people Luna was going to assign to keeping an eye on her._

Luna gave one last look her way over her shoulder before disappearing out the door.

Clarke knew she was in for a sleepless night.

 

-x-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN: This, and ch8, are from what was originally a longer chapter, with a lot of what you’ve probably been waiting for—hope you enjoy. (swear i wrote it bef S3 aired).**
> 
>   
>  _________
> 
>   **CONTENT WARNING: Clarke points her gun at Lexa, and threatens to shoot her in this chapter.**  
> 


	8. ' LOST CAUSES '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ouch, that ended up being a long wait, sorry.  
> Rest assured this series is and will still be going strong. (There were other reasons this was delayed, but I live in the backwoods rust belt of US and the commencing of the apocalypse required my attention.)
> 
> Sincere thank you to everyone for investing in this story with me, and all of your kind comments. It’s become a labor of love, since I was working on it when Lexa died (air quotes), and being able to share it with you means a lot to me.
> 
> Time for a Lunexa reunion, as well as that Clexa angst/hearts eyes y'all are hungry for. I really enjoy the dynamic between Lexa and Luna in this universe, and getting to explore some kinds of relationships with Lexa that we didn't get to see.  
> 
> This was one of my favorite chapters. I think you’ll all enjoy it. And some of the things on the way. :)
> 
> _The songs for these scenes are ‘St Jude’ by Florence & ‘Home’ by Jasmine Thompson._

* * *

 —-x-—

 

When Luna approached, The Commander was staring at the dark sea before her with an intensity in her eyes and a knit in her brow. She had been pacing, and was standing on the outskirts of the settlement at an overlook by the dunes. Black water lay beyond her on one side, and the light of a city fire glowed in the distance on the other.

"She's angry,” Luna said, speaking in trigedasleng.

Lexa turned and shot her a glaringly obvious look. "How long has she been here?” she demanded.  

"One night and one day.”

"You did not send a messenger to alert me you were hosting The _Sky_ Commander?” Lexa sounded pissed.

But it was an empty derision: in transit herself, the Commander would have missed any messenger. "I was assessing her.”

“GO—Give her supplies. Do whatever you can to keep her from leaving.”

“She’s agreed to stay until morning for a boat.”  

Lexa only nodded. But the information seemed to calm her some. “You should have sent word immediately.”

“Before even being sure she was who she says? I have not heard from you since before your campaign _against_ the Sky People. I have not yet seen Esus myself since it ended.” The compliance and delicate discretion in Luna’s tone shifted and firmed. “The Sky Commander’s attitude towards you was ill—her presence mysterious and unexpected—for all I know there could have been an army of Sky People between here and Polis doing Azgeda's bidding. And sending a boat messenger toward Polis, now…? I don't even understand how _you_ got here, what is this of a war at the capital?”

“Not actively. Yet—Why is she here?" It was unlike Lexa to ignore preemptive logistics.

"She says Linkon sent her during your attacks. That now she seeks an alliance with Seigeda, and not you.”

Lexa restrained a sigh. After a moment, she said, “Linkon is a fool..." But it was distant and unconvincing. Her eyes glimmered over the dark ocean in thought.

"She…takes what you did personally."

“The Sky People take everything personally.” There was still a distancing bite in Lexa’s words.

“I kept eyes on her. Gave her space, and time. She didn’t do anything remotely suspicious. But I had to be sure…She’s shaken.”

Lexa’s jaw twitched.

Luna took Lexa in before she spoke again. "You've been attacked…”

"In the streets, in broad daylight. Spies. Azgeda and their allies have surrounded Polis and made themselves clear. There is no way to pretend this is not happening now."

"And you left?”

"Indra and Starbuck kom Rolkru are commanding Polis. I left the last opportunity I had to avoid getting trapped inside. Unless I've been given away, our enemies do not know that yet." Lexa scowled out at the dark sea in silence. “I must rally every soldier we have and attack Azgeda from behind.” But where her hands were clasped behind her back, it was with an urge to unravel rather than a powerful rigidity. She let off a long, drawn out sigh with a hard blink, and her tone became a hair less severe, her eyes still fixed on the horizon when she spoke. "Is she okay?"

“I do not know her well enough to say.” Luna took a step forward. “She’s haunted. I can’t say what, but something about her story is off. Something's wrong…Her spirit is unsteady and grated; most of the time, her eyes seem half dead.”

“She may have taken heavy losses at the Mountain, after I left.” Lexa attempted to restraint the regret in her voice. “Klark’s heart is stubborn, she does not prepare for loss.” She paused with a swallow, before she spoke again. “My scouts to the Sky People returned only as heads in bags.”

“Skaikru did this?”

“You know who did it.”

Luna shifted, perhaps for the first time, uncomfortable. "Is Esus well?"

Lexa turned to her and nodded, her look softer. "For now. He is inside the compound in Capitol.” Her eyes flitted back to the distance over the sea instead of at Luna. “His scars heal.”

Luna knew why Lexa wasn’t looking at her. But she did not need to blame her for impossible decisions in Tondisi. She trusted her as Commander. Even if her spouse had almost lost his life. She stepped up beside Lexa. "Carry the weight of everything past, Leksa, and you will not have the strength to pick up the new.”

Lexa looked up to her in question.

“You do what you must.”

“' _Talk'…_?” Lexa trained her eyes glumly back on the water.

Luna gave a quick nod. They did not need to acknowledge the TonDC rumors out loud, and Luna didn't need to know. “Whatever decisions you've made, I cannot blame you for it when it holds together what we have. If Esus had died, I would already know those decisions were in the interest of Ren’s future.”

“Not everyone,” Lexa said, “is as understanding as you.” Before the burden in the end of her words could fully settle, she turned to face Luna, looking official. “Did you find out anything about the Mountain from the Sky Commander?”

"She says that she took it—no alliances—that Skaikru has the Mountain."

Lexa’s eyes fixed on Luna’s as she took this in, and they mutually acknowledged the gravity of it.

"She would not say how," Luna continued quietly. "Would Klark lie about that?"

Deep in thought, Lexa didn’t respond right away. She picked at her fingernails without looking at them. “Yes. She would bluff if it served her. If she were desperate, or lost her people…She has done it before. She went through Polis?”

“I believe so.” Luna nodded. “She was on foot. Alone. My scouts traced her path north, no sign of anyone else. But there’s no way to be sure.”

Lexa shifted, uneasy. She knew it wasn’t good. "Why would she come all the way out here…”

Luna gave Lexa ample time to mull, before she asked, “Do we have a problem, Commander?"

“It could be some kind of trap. It would not be like Klark to risk so much for an ambiguous, kind-hearted gamble. If that was what she was truly looking for she would have come to me."

"Maybe you underestimate the intensity of her feelings towards you."

Lexa shot Luna an inquisitive look.

Luna only archly raised a brow in response.

But Lexa disregarded it, and the distant scowl slipped back between her brows. “She cannot leave this city.”

“Agreed. Shall I have her placed under guard? She’s still armed.”

”I will not hold Klark prisoner.”

Luna hesitated. "Heda…”

She was met with the cut of Lexa's jaw and a stony silence. The waves crashed in the distance where the Commander's attention was yet again fixed.

Luna sucked in a breath and expelled her words with it. “We both know that the rumors about you are bullshit…” Her tone shifted away, distinctly now, from the deferential one of a subordinate. "Except the ones about your feelings for Klark.”

Lexa's eyes flashed and snapped up to meet Luna’s.

“She’s special to you?" Luna said it like a question but it wasn't one.

”Where did you hear this?" Lexa ground out.

“ _’Talk'_."

Lexa was trying to act sovereign, but Luna could see the layers of fear passing through her eyes. She knew Lexa; she knew why.

" _Quash_ this talk."

"It has already been spoken. Klark is not safe."

"She is Commander of the Sky People—that alone makes her special, valuable, and in danger."

"Lying to me," Luna's eyes wielded the handful of years she had on Lexa, "is proof of only fear, not strength."

Lexa hesitated and her resolve wavered, her eyes darting further out into the distance. The words caught in her throat, “You’re a nuisance…”

“A nuisance you came to see on the threshold of a war you should be commanding in the capital. We both know you would not be here if your foundation were not shaken.”

“You sell me short.”

“There is nothing wrong with being wounded, Leksa. There _is_ something wrong with ignoring your wounds until they fester and kill you.” Luna’s words were now matter of fact, having deemed formality no longer useful. “You have lost Anya, Gustus. _Tondisi_ —” The gravity of the losses tightened in her throat as she listed them. She knew of them from informants, not from the sentiment of Lexa herself; speaking them out loud dropped their reality into the air, and broke the spell of distance. “Now Klark? And you are at risk of losing Polis, the Coalition, your _life_. Do not attempt to speak to me like none of this has happened.”

“Do not attempt to speak to me like I am not your Commander—”

“Klark has worked her way inside of you,”* she said, in blatant dismissal of Lexa’s warning.  

Lexa’s head jerked towards her before she restrained it along with her expression. “And you know this, _how_?" Lexa said, stiff and sharp. "I have been in her presence all of one minute."

Luna side-glanced her, almost amused, but ever aware of the dangerous terrain she was pushing. "I could guess it before you arrived. I’ve been watching her. Something may be wrong, but I can still see that she is at once, strong like a seasoned cougar, and wondrous like a child. Her mind is even sharper than her tongue, and her heart too large for her own good. While capable of conquering nations." She looked pointedly back at Lexa.

Lexa’s eyes danced around the ocean, unable to look at Luna “Klark is special,” she said with a tight chest. “This means nothing.”

“I think, Heda, you believe you are hiding your emotions better than you really are.” Luna paused. “I have never seen someone speak to you like she just did and keep their tongue…or, for that matter, their life. Not even me.”

Lexa glanced at her, with a stiff shake of her head. “That does not mean…”

“She pointed _a gun_ at you, and threatened your life. And you did not even have it taken away."

Lexa didn't have anything to say to that. She shifted.

“I also have eyes.”

"What is that supposed to mean?" Lexa turned with a scowl. "Do not—"

“I _mean_ , I wasn’t expecting her to be so…” she smiled, squinting for the right word, “ _Cute_. Were you?" She stepped closer, next to Lexa. “Or young. She's younger than you, isn't she?"

Lexa sighed and her eyes darted away. "She’s lost weight…Did you feed her well?"

Luna scoffed. “You have to ask? You should have seen the look on her face when she tried bacon for the first time.”

Lexa knew what Luna was doing. But she’d given up her privilege to any interest in those parts of Clarke when she walked away from her, bloody. After a long silence, her tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip. She all but yielded in what was almost a whisper, “Klark’s spirit challenges me to grow…” There was a subtle lump lodged in Lexa's throat beneath her words, but Luna could hear it.

“I will not tell anyone." The corner of Luna’s lips quirked up as she stared at the ocean beside Lexa.

A bitter-sweet moment descended between them.

“Anya would like her…” Luna said. “She would hate that she liked her.”

A fleeting smile crossed Lexa’s lips—one with layers of haunted things and sadness—but they curled upwards more than they had in awhile. Only to quickly droop again. “Klark escaped with her from the Mountain. She said she was with Anya when she died. Had convinced her to ask me for a truce.”

Luna’s eyebrows went into her forehead, turning to look at Lexa in disbelief. “ _Anya?”_

Lexa nodded. “That’s what I was told.”

“Perhaps…Klark is even more talented than she appears.”

“She does not fail to surprise me. Again, and again.”

Luna gave Lexa somewhat of a coy look, but Lexa returned it with one of her own that shot it down. “How did Anya die...?” Luna asked.

“Klark was not clear.“

“You did not _ask_?”

“There were more important things at hand.”

“But—”

“I believe Sky People killed her before our alliance was stabilized. If it had been the Mountain Men, Klark would have used it as ammunition to convince me to join her against them. It no longer matters.”

“Or she was lying.”

Lexa's head turned slowly to Luna. “Or she was lying."

Another serious silence passed between them, until Luna made a face, and she muttered. "Anya would like Clarke more if she DID kill her..."

The hint of a smile tugged valiantly at Lexa’s lips again.

Luna pushed at her throat, hedging. “I have heard Klark’s story…of how she ended up with the Sky People, coming to earth…From thirteen nations turned to twelve.” She pursed her lips. "There are twelve nations on the ground."

Lexa’s jaw tightened.

"Heda…it’s a sign. There were thirteen eastern tribes that started the Lost Nation of States here before us."

“And that did not end well for anyone.”

“Perhaps…you and _Klakeda_ are destined to lead us into a new world together.”

“Your heart works quicker than your mind, Luna.” The dismissal was subtle, but Lexa’s voice took on a sharp, jagged edge. “And your ability to see meaning where there is none has not served me.”

Luna's voice was a soft, steady hush, a severity there that was startling coming from her mouth but that she carried well. “Commander, or no Commander,” she said, "I _will not_ take being blamed by you for Kostia’s death."

Lexa’s jaw cut tighter at Luna’s bare insubordinate eyes. "You should watch your place, Luna."

"And you should watch yours. Leading with the lesser drives of your personality is your enemy's weakness. If you become like your enemy this will be a lost war. And we will all suffer.” She hijacked the subject before Lexa could respond. “If it were not for signs you would not _be_ Heda.”

“I am Heda because of my _actions.”_

“And what inspired them?”

Lexa looked up at her, a swallowed threat in her eyes.

“I would hate with all of my being to have to align with _her_ ,” Luna said, a little less severely but no less firm; her tone left no question she was referring to Islin. “But you know I will, if I _have_ to, for my people. Do not lead me into a position where I must."

Lexa responded with a taught and noble silence.

Luna eased. “I should be able to convince Klark to take audience in the name of diplomacy tomorrow." When Lexa took this quietly Luna stared her down and asked, “Did you bed her?”

Lexa’s head tracked up to her with venom, eyes sharp with fury and warning, and breath coiled in her chest.

Luna only continued to stare her down in question. “I am trying to understand.”

Lexa gave nothing but a reluctant, curt shake of her head before fixing back on the water.

Luna nodded, deep in thought, and muttered, "Good.” She was trying to get into both of their heads.

Lexa was silent for a long time. "This war is infinitely more important than Klark.”

”Heda…" Luna started tactfully, “I am not good at war. But I am good at people.”

Lexa looked up.

The faint flicker of a swallowed smile drew back around Luna’s features. "It seems to me, that the key to this war _is_ in your ability to mend this relationship with Klark.”

Lexa faltered. It slowly sank in that Luna was, in many ways, right. She looked much more equipped to march to the slaughter at the head of an army.

 

* * *

 

It had been hours since Clarke’s confrontation with Lexa, and the night was wearing thin. Having been much too restless to stay shut in the bungalow like a voluntary prisoner, she had stalked out into the night looking to be swallowed by its solitude, distinctly missing the desolation of her woods. She was now staring into a dwindling, abandoned, stone-fire at the edge of the city, far away from anyone who may still be awake.

“Klark…?”

Clarke rose with a jerk at the familiar voice. Fury blazed in the width of her eyes when she saw the figure in the darkness. “What part of get the fuck away from me didn’t you understand.” She had specifically come here to be alone. And here was Lexa, emerging from the shadows.

"I was out for a walk."

"Yeah,” Clarke bit. “You're good at that."

Lexa took a deep strained breath that stymied in her chest. She nodded and took a respectful step back. Maybe she really had happened upon Clarke unintentionally.  “You said you were leaving. There are things you need to know before you do.”

Clarke squinted at her as she began to step away. “Right.”

Lexa turned back towards her.

"It's all just politics.”

“You said you didn’t want to speak to me.”

“I _don’t.”_ Clarke crossed her arms, glaring. "But I'm not surprised you aren't even gonna try. Shutting off. That's what works for you, right? Or did you ever even give a shit?“

Lexa’s expression changed. She shifted into a thick, painfully familiar, space where it seemed like she was responding, though she didn't say a word. She took some weighty steps towards Clarke, her attention on Clarke keen, and paused at the edge of the glowing flicker of the fire that cut the night. “I’m sor—”

“ _No._ " Clarke shook her head, her eyes sparkling and vicious. “You don’t get to apologize for something like this—You left me and my people to _die_. You just walked away.”

Lexa stepped forward, just out of the grasp of shadows. She opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, then said it anyway. “I…did not expect you to actually go after an entire nation alone, Klark.”

“Then you don’t know me very well.”

Lexa nodded, regarding her carefully. “That was my mistake.” Her eyes changed after a moment, her voice cushioned. "This isn’t what I wanted…"

“You have a lot of nerve coming after me alone out here right now.” Clarke's tone was ominous. It was probably a good thing she'd deliberately left her gun in a fresh hiding space. Getting locked up by Lexa’s people would only make everything so much worse. It made her angrier how much power Lexa had. She turned violently to leave. But she stopped herself and jerked back around. “You’re a horrible ally—You don’t even know how to lead when isn’t all about _you._ Maybe someone else _should_ take over the Coalition."

Lexa’s jaw tightened.

Clarke knew it was a low blow, that it was borderline childish. She knew the kind of person who was threatening to take Lexa’s place now would never even bother to be looking for her forgiveness. But that didn't change anything. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish right now—but there is nothing you could possibly say that’s gonna make what _you_ did somehow okay. You want to talk politics, so we know where our people stand—fine. But I am not having _this_ conversation with you now. Or ever. You _made_ your choice. And it obviously wasn’t me."

"I didn’t have a choic—”

"You _did_. And it wasn’t just about me—My people? Our alliance—wasn’t _worth_ the risk. And _I_ certainly wasn’t either. There were barely more of your people inside that mountain than _died_ in TonDC! Don’t patronize me by coming out here and trying to act like that isn’t what happened, like you're noble somehow, just because now _you_ need an ally. That’s what you want,” she said, getting in Lexa’s face, “isn’t it? Now that _you’re_ the one who needs help, and _I’ve_ got the better weapons?” Clarke shook her head stiffly, and her lips curled. “You _really_ expect me to care?"

Lexa was silent for a long moment, staring back at Clarke on the wake of the words. “It was about more than the number of lives.”

Clarke scoffed, and ran her fingers through her hair, anticipating a lecture.

“ _Everything_ I do is to protect my people. The Coalition is more important than anything else. It means that the children may not have to grow up under constant threat of attack, like—” Lexa hesitated and suppressed something. “Like the people before them. In fear. That is why I chose to attack your people when you came here. That is why I risked so much, and the lives of the people in Tondisi, to attack the Mountain."

“Well you should have risked more," Clarke said bitterly. "The Mountain Men may have started that war, but _I_ finished it—Not you. You _left,_ Lexa. You didn't see it through. And you abandoned the _future_ of your people for a couple hundred lives in the present. For _what?_ To be _liked_ ? You abandoned—” Clarke's cut herself off, because her voice had gotten too emotional. _You abandoned me._

But Clarke’s words had stirred a fiery defense in Lexa's eyes. "Preserving the Coalition was more important. Ending the Mountain People would have been worthless if my people started killing each other again."

" _Worthless_?" Clarke spat.

The subtext of Lexa’s implications hung heavily in the air, and pressed down on her shoulders: _I'm worthless? My people are worthless?_ Lexa was silent. She knew she’d backed herself into a corner.

“And look where you are now," Clarke said. "Your coalition is fucked anyway. Too bad you threw away your ‘worthless’ friends."

Lexa regarded her silently, her eyes heavy. “Klark—”

Clarke turned on her heel, ignoring her.

Lexa's voice was weaker when she spoke again. "Kl—” Lexa trailed after her in the dark. Her words, over Clarke’s shoulder, became self-consciously muted. "You are not worthless..."

She paused when Clarke stopped, back still turned to Lexa.

Lexa swallowed and fortified herself. "You’re—” her throat clamped around her words, her mouth not doing its job to form them. “You’re…” Things left unsaid, that met an iron wall in the back of her throat. Her voice was soft, different again; seeping out from somewhere restrained. “You are anything but worthless…”

The air was thick with the possibility of her saying more. Clarke allowed herself to hang on it, just for a moment.

“What you are to me…” Lexa’s voice was already firming up to its usual pitch, “you cannot be to the Commander.”

Emotion welled in Clarke's voice when she spoke, despite her bitter words. “Well _the Commander_ fucked up, didn’t she? She should have known how valuable that alliance really was." Clarke stepped towards her, and bit the words of Lexa’s own mentor back at her. "You started a fight you don't know how to end."

Lexa swallowed. She sealed her eyes shut. “I wanted to go back,” she confessed.

There was a pressing anxiety in her voice, but it was suddenly so different, Clarke almost faltered, and had a hard time ignoring _how_ different it was.

“Even if it was just me. I wanted to go back, for you—"  The severity had snuck up in Lexa voice, rising with each mantra; it threatened to crack the third time she said it. "You do not know how much I _wanted_ to go back..."

"Well you didn't. Did you?"

"I couldn—"

"And it wouldn't have mattered anyway. You should have never left in the first place, but I _didn't need_ you. And trust me. I still don't." Clarke stepped brazenly forward, surprising even herself. "That scares, 'The Commander'. Doesn't it?"

She was met with an unwavering pliancy. Lexa sat back on her heals, and shut her eyes again, evening out her breath. “I was hoping that,”  she pursed her lips, her voice quiet and yielding now. Her eyes slid open, and she tried not to look away. “Maybe. If I ever saw you again…you might understand. What I di—”

Clarke charged out of the shadows in front of Lexa’s face. "I do understand. I _DO_.” She caught herself and lowered her voice, still trying to suppress the wetness pushing through it with the spitting fire in her heart.

She tried to steady her breath as Lexa looked up at her under a bowed head.

She hated the way that Lexa's presence knocked the bricks out from under her insides. Not _‘The Commander’_ . Lexa. “I’m not one of _you_ .” Clarke shook her head. "I never will be. But I _did_ think, that _I,_ was one of _your_ people..." It was a soft confession that contrasted with her attitude.

Lexa looked down and licked her lips. When she looked steadily back up at Clarke, it was with something in her eyes that seemed permanently cracked and broken, but resolved. The nod was almost too subtle to catch.  "One."

The finite word pierced through the vast darkness of the night sky around them, and echoed, despite how quiet it had been. Clarke stared back at Lexa. Her chest tumbled, not into warmth, but chaos, as if it had been bumped on its axis in space.

Their eyes bore into each other's.

Clarke's had fire in them. She needed it there or the tide overwhelming her throat would be insurmountable and destroy her. She was done being destroyed. She was just so _done._

A coldness washed over Clarke and set in her teeth. She reclaimed the metal that had blossomed within her these past two weeks. It stung through the air in her words. "Not anymore."

And despite feeling dead inside, her shoulders were light.

 

—X—

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Since the trigedasleng term for 'to love' is from 'hold inside' Luna's implications here are heavy.**


	9. ' THE WORLD IS DARK '

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter is 'To Make a Portrait' by Message to Bears. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

 —-x-— 

 

"Les-ka!" The body of the boy came crashing into Lexa’s hip and curled around her.

Lexa looked down at Wren with an unreadable expression. "Leksa," she said simply, and gave him a firm pat on the head, keeping her hand there.

"Heda," Luna corrected further. The sky had only just shifted in favor of the new day above the hard-packed, dirt streets of Chesa. They stood together away from the bustle, across the street from the overhang of the outdoor canteen.

Wren looked up at Lexa and giggled deliberately, mischief in his smile. "Leska..." He skipped around her.

"Your child is willful, Luna."

Luna smiled proudly. “Yes. He will cause trouble."

“Do not encourage him. He encourages himself plenty."

Wren jumped up in front of Lexa with his arms up, motioning to go on her back.

"Not now, Ren. Go,” she said cooly.

Luna moved closer to Lexa’s side as Wren skipped off, rolling his head in disappointment, but complacent. She lowered her voice. “Were the herbs I gave you strong enough to sleep?” They spoke with the distinctive aura and serious expressions of leaders: heads bowed close, voices low, and eyes on the sparse city around them.

Lexa lied, and nodded, as she watched Wren disappear down the road from the corner of her eyes. “Muchof.” _Thank you._ She needed as much sleep as she could squeeze in right now, but it was hard-coming, and there was never enough.

Luna followed Lexa’s gaze down the street and stared at Wren for a moment, before shifting the Commander’s attention away from wherever it had wandered. “Have you been able to speak to Klark at all yet?”

Lexa spoke slowly, brooding and distracted in thought. “Yes.”

Luna’s brow quirked. “And…?”

Lexa only shook her head, the entirety of her answer. She was distinctly lackluster and distracted this morning; a puppeteer who had begun to lose interest in animating her own body. She stared back down the street where Wren had disappeared again. “Even if it was possible…She would need time. That we don’t have. The fact the Sky Commander is willing to meet to discuss diplomacy is a favor in itself. I can only offer her people the restitution I can, and hope she does not decide to turn against us.”

“Heda…you think Klark would do that?”

“I think she will do whatever is best for her people.”

“Is it wise, to let her leave…?” _Nothing_ about it was wise.

Lexa restrained the movement of her lips from surrounding eyes, so as not to draw attention. “I will not hold Klark against her will.”

Luna was swallowing words. Many of them.

It was noticeable enough that Lexa looked up at her, and signaled her to speak.

“None of the possibilities that come from her leaving here are good—if she is seized and taken to Islin she will either be tortured to death, or ally with them. Heda, you cannot even get scouts through Trigeda territory alive right now, you think that—”

Lexa’s hand popped up to silence her, she scowled, still not looking at Luna.  She was hoping to find some way to keep Clarke from leaving on her own volition, so that wouldn't be a problem. She was also hoping Clarke’s people weren’t in part responsible for that blockade. “Does she know yet that the Ice People have also occupied the area surrounding Skaikru?”

“If she does, she has not said anything.”

“If we can convince Klark they are a threat, she won’t ignore the value of common interest.” Despite the recklessness Clarke seemed to be on fire with, Lexa hoped she would be reasonable once she was informed.

“And if they’re allies?”

“You know as well as I do, Azgeda is a threat to her people whether they are allied or not.” Lexa watched, across the slow, morning bustle in the street, as Clarke approach the hall they’d arranged to meet in this morning.

Clarke shot her a dismissive glare from afar.

“Let us hope it doesn’t come to that,” Lexa said.

Clarke crossed her arms and set in outside the entrance to the hall, still glowering.

“Do not let her out of your sight, Luna.” It was more of a prayer than a command.

* * *

 

When Luna and Lexa approached, Clarke waited without greeting for them to enter the meeting hall. When she moved to follow after them, Luna paused in the door, effectively cutting her off.

“Before we start, Klark. I need to show you the supplies for your trip in case adjustments need to be made.” She motioned for Clarke to follow her. Lexa scowled at Luna suspiciously from the interior of the room, but did not follow.

Once they were in the alley beside the building, Clarke turned to Luna, awaiting a direction to follow.

But it was quickly obvious Luna had no intention of doing what she’d suggested. She was promptly in Clarke’s face. “If it were up to me you would not be permitted to leave this city. But it is not.”

Clarke gave her a questioning, if not combative look.

“That the Commander outranks me is a given, and she refuses to hold you against your own will.”

Clarke’s mouth, which had been opened to say something, closed.

“Even if it is for your own good. She will try to explain to you _why_ that is the case. You would be wise not to be vindictive and to _listen.”_ There was a hardness in Luna that Clarke hadn’t seen before. The natural warmth and comfort that had been there, even after Clarke had threatened Lexa, had slipped away entirely. Luna stepped towards her, her voice piercing. “What did Islin tell you, when you shook her hand?”

Clarke’s lips parted in question and she scowled back into Luna’s eyes, which were drilling into her, closer to her personal space than she’d even come in the bungalow the other night. “What?”

Luna didn’t say anything, her expression just became a little more distant as she continued to scrutinize Clarke. She pursed her lips, before she spoke. “Kostia was not kidnapped.”

Clarke blinked at the name being brought up again.

“She was invited, as a peacekeeping ambassador.”

Clarke’s eyes widened a little but she kept her jaw firm, staring back at Luna.

“They cut pieces from her body. _And_ her spirit.”

There was cultural implication in those words that Clarke didn't fully understand.

“Until there was nothing left. And they kept her alive long enough to witness it.” Luna’s words pressed, and went further under her breath, aware they may be interrupted at any moment. “What Islin says to your face, and _does_ when it suits her are two different things. Rumors about your attachment to the Commander are enough for her to publicly cut you open and play with your insides while you watch—on only the _chance_ it will make the Commander squirm before she is executed herself. The fact Lexa’s sentiments _are_ genuine only makes that worse. If you or your people have made some kind of agreement with Azgeda, now is the time for you to speak. The Commander will give you an out.”

Clarke wanted to trust Luna. Every impractical talent of perception inside her _raged_ to trust Luna—and that's exactly why she _didn’t_. She knew Luna’s power lay in her charisma and way with people. She hadn’t come to command among the brutal grounder culture for nothing. Clarke knew Luna’s interest in the coalition, and she wouldn’t put it past her to be specifically talented at manipulation. References from Lincoln or not, the Grounders were in desperate times amongst themselves.

"If you think using fear, to manipulate me into siding with the Commander is going to work, it _isn’t._ I’m not afraid of Azgeda.”

“That is the _problem,_ Klark.”

* * *

 

“Are you aware Azgeda has your people surrounded?” Lexa had, apparently, already learned that approaching things directly from the matter of Clarke’s own safety was counter-effective.

But the two intense pairs of scrutinizing eyes now attached to Clarke in the meeting hall were enough for her to temper herself before she reacted. “I was not.”

“How long have you been traveling?" Lexa asked in the same curt voice. "You were alone?”

“I fail to see what that has to do with the standing relationship between our people.” Lexa was at war, and there was carefully styled face-black streaked down her cheek bones this morning.

“If you have been negotiating with Azgeda, and they sent you here, it has everything to do with the relationship between our people.”

The paint set off the whites in her eyes even in the dim room, and it only made the twisted knot in Clarke’s gut tighter, reminding her of the last time they’d ‘negotiated’ on the battlefield, when the delicate line of her jaw was messed with splattered blood. “No alliance has been made between Skaikru and Azgeda that I’m aware of. But you‘ve already done a pretty good job of convincing us to side with them yourself.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Sorry?”

“They are a danger to your people whether you ally with them or not.”

Clarke’s eyes darted away, unimpressed.

“You don’t believe me?

Clarke remained firm and silent.

“You have no reason to back them, Klark. They are _more_ dangerous to you as allies, it gives them opportunity to infiltrate your advantages. I know I haven’t given you reason to trust me again—”

" _Under_ tsatement."

“Relying on the Mountain to crawl into and hide, is a mistake. We grew up at war with these people. You don’t know how they operate, we do _._ You have the chance to turn your weapons against them and help me stop this coup before they turn Polis into a battlefield and it escalates into an ongoing bloodbath. I know you may think that will serve you, but Azgeda will not exclude your people from their exploits.”

Clarke didn’t say anything, pressing Lexa to fill the silence herself.

“I am not asking for a standing alliance. I’m asking you to help me keep peace, for _all_ of our people. You may not like it, but it’s better than the death that will come to your people’s door if I fail.”

She continued to look away from Lexa with dismissive humor.

Lexa added, “Don’t let your feelings cloud your judgement.”

Clarke kept her jaw firm and bit down the urge to scoff and shake her head again. She was beyond bitter.

“I owe your people restitution—and they will have it. Islin is a despot. If she takes control it will plunge all twelve clans into turmoil, which your people will be caught in the middle of. You _know_ siding with me in this is what’s best for them.”

“Do I? _Islin_ hasn’t betrayed me before.”

“She _will._ Intentionally. And with what she—” Lexa cut herself off. She gritted her jaw. “Klark. For you to personally seek her out is—” Lexa swallowed her words again. She took a step forward, and her voice dropped to a pressing hiss, **“** You have not seen what she does…she will hang pieces of your body from the trees to be eaten by animals.”

Clarke pressed towards her. “I’m not your dead ex-girlfriend,” she bit without mercy.

Lexa recoiled.

The story about Costia was a bramble in Clarke’s head now. She resented Luna for putting it there on purpose. It wasn’t hers to bear. Lexa betrayed her. “My people have no reason to have anything to do with yours. _Or_ the ones you’ve lost control of. We have missiles. We have acid fog. We don’t need an alliance to keep you away from us.”

“You’ve said you’ve taken the Mountain.” Lexa was all commander again. “How?”

Clarke’s gut was already knotting up at the mention. She stepped back and turned away from them.

"Did you disarm them?” Lexa pressed. “Are your forces thinned from occupying it?”

Clarke had no answers for her. Her throat weighed inside of her, gravity slowly giving her a crushing kind of vertigo, as Lexa looked at her expectantly, eyes beaming through her warpaint.

“Can you _reach_ it through the Azgeda blockade?—”

The nightmares that had followed Clarke through the forest seeped in, weighing on her shoulders, inside her chest, quicker than she’d expected. They sucked the air from the room, and began to strangle any capacity she may have had to deflect Lexa's interrogation with it.

“How do you know the Mountain People won't retaliate?” Lexa had no idea. She was admonishing Clarke like an inexperience warleader.

Clarke tried to swallowed, her heart as tight as her jaw was. "It's under control..." Her back was still stubbornly turned to them, eyes darting absently. She tried to get a handle on the constriction in her chest and how fast her heart was beating, to regain control and think, but most of her effort was going in to tamping down the tightness constricting her throat so she could even speak.

"People who are conquered do not remain obedient to you unless you give them a reason to be.”

The weight was constricting in Clarke’s chest, crushing her. She tried to grab onto it and tear it open but was losing.  "I _said,_ it’s under control…” The gravity of everything that had happened was ringing in her ears, set off by the sooty smell of the grounder’s space, and Lexa’s presence looming behind her.

Lexa stepped forward, and beared down on her, “The Mountain People—”

“ _There_ ARE no more Mountain People!" Clarke snapped, whirling to face Lexa with ferocity. She _really_ snapped. "I killed every last one of them—” Everything inside of Clarke crashed out of her. “There are no _people_ in there—" She got in Lexa’s face. “That Mountain is full of hundreds of festering bodies—the children, our allies—I pulled a lever and watched them writhe around on the floor while their skin melted off—because YOU, _left!_ And you _KNEW_ that's what I would have to do. Did you think I _wouldn’t DO_ it? Don’t you fucking patronize me you _weak,_ double crossing, _coward_.”

Lexa pressed back, stunned. But Clarke was closing on her without restraint, and Lexa wouldn’t have been able to say anything if she’d tried.

"They made me watch while they strapped my mother to a table and _drilled_ into her to suck the marrow out of her bones while she was still awake—that’s how they were killing my people, my friends, and _all_ of that happened because of YOU. You want me to fight _your_ war now? The only reason I would even think about it is to walk away in the middle of it, and do the same thing you did to me. How DARE you even think about asking me to fight for you—“

Lexa's lips fluttered.

“— _I_ don't _have_ weapons.” The anger in Clarke’s voice cracked to emotion and its volume began to waver. “ _I_ don't have the Mountain. I don’t even have my people anymore, I left them, without even saying goodbye because I couldn’t bare to fucking look at them after what you forced me to do to keep them alive. The only reason I came here, was because I wasn't ready to freeze and starve to death out there alone. And I had _nowhere_ else to go, OKAY? I ran away. They don't even know where I am—I don't HAVE anything for you!”

The room crackled weakly in Clarke’s silence, her chest rising and falling. Lexa and Luna stood frozen, gaping at her. Lexa's mouth occasionally fluttered in search of words but it was only met with air.

Clarke swallowed and did her best to shoot Lexa a glaring look, but she couldn’t see through the tears stinging her eyes. She wasn't able to hold back what was coming next anymore. She turned away before it came out, and fled the meeting hall as quickly and violently as she could.

 

**-x-**


End file.
